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LAND AND SEA TALES 
FOR BOYS AND GIRLS 


Books by Rudyard Kipling 


f 


Actions and Reactions 
Brushwood Boy, The 
Captains Courageous 
Collected Verse 
Day’s Work, The 
Departmental Ditties 
AND Ballads and Bar¬ 
rack-Room Ballads 
Diversity of Crea¬ 
tures, A 

Eyes of Asia, The 
Feet of the Young 
Men, The 
Five Nations, Thb 
France at War 
Fringes of the Fleet 
From Sea to Sea 
History of England, A 
Irish Guards in the 
Great War, The 
Jungle Book, The 
Jungle Book, Second 
Just So Song Book 
Just So Stories 
Kim 

Kipling Anthology 
Prose and Verse 
Kipling Stories and 
Poems Every Child 
Should Know 
Kipling Birthday Book, 
The 

Letters of Travel 
Life’s Handicap: Being 
Stories of Mine Own 
People 


Light That Failed, 
The 

Many Inventions 
Naulahka, The (Withi 
Wolcott Balestier) 
Plain Tales From the 
Hills 

Puck of Poor’s Hill 
Rewards and Fairies 
Rudyard Kipling’s 
Verse: Inclusive Edi¬ 
tion, 1885-1918 
Sea Warfare 

Seven Seas, The 
Soldier Stories 

Soldiers Three, The 
Story of the Gadsbys, 
AND In Black and 
'White 

Song of the English, 
A 

Songs from Books 
Stalky & Co. 

They 

Traffics and Discover¬ 
ies 

Under the Deodars, 
The Phantom ’Rick¬ 
shaw, AND Wee Willie 
W iNKIE 

With the Night Mail 
Years Between, The 




i 

Land and Sea Tales 
for Boys and Girls 


By Rudyard ^ipling/ 



GARDEN CITY NEW YORK 

DOUBLEDAY, PAGE & COMPANY 

1923 

















COPYRIGHT, 1893, 1895, 1897, 1898, 1900, 1918, 1920, 1922, 1923, BY 

RUDYARD KIPLING V 

ALL RIGHTS RESERVED, INCLUDING THAT OF TRANSLATION 
INTO FOREIGN LANGUAGES, INCLUDING THE SCANDINAVIAN 

PRINTED IN THE UNITED STATES 
AT 

THE COUNTRY LIFE PRESS, CARDEN CITY, K. T. 

First Edition 

©C1A760863 

NOV 13 '23 



''AO ■V' 


PREFACE 


To all to whom this little book may come— 
Health for yourselves and those you hold 
most dear; 

Content abroad, and happiness at home, 
And—one grand secret in your private 
ear:— 

Nations have passed away and left no 
traces^ 

And History gives the naked cause of it — 
One single, simple reason in all cases; 

They fell because their people were not fit. 

Now, though your Body be mis-shapen, 
blind. 

Lame, feverish, lacking substance, power 
or skill. 

Certain it is that men can school the Mind 
To school the sickliest Body to her will— 
As many have done, whose glory blazes 
still 

Like mighty fires in meanest lanterns lit: 
Wherefore, we pray the crippled, weak 
and ill— 

Be fit—be fit! In mind at first be fit! 







vi PREFACE 

And, though your Spirit seem uncouth or 
small, 

Stubborn as clay or shifting as the sand. 
Strengthen the Body, and the Body shall 
Strengthen the Spirit till she take com¬ 
mand; 

As a bold rider brings his horse in hand 
At the tall fence, with voice and heel and bit. 
And leaps while all the field are at a stand. 
Be fit—be fit! In body next be fit! 

Nothing on earth—no arts, no gifts, nor 
graces — 

No fame, no wealth—outweighs the 
want of it. 

This is the Law which every law embraces — 
Be fit—he fit! In mind and body he 
jit! 

The even heart that seldom slurs its beat— 
The cool head weighing what that heart 
desires— 

The measuring eye that guides the hands 
and feet— 

The Soul unbroken when the Body tires— 
These are the things our weary world 
requires 

Far more than superfluities of wit; 






PREFACE vii 

Wherefore we pray you, sons of generous 
sires, 

Be fit—be fit! For Honour’s sake be fit. 

There is one lesson at all Times and 
Places — 

One changeless Truth on all things 
changing writ. 

For hoys and girls, men, women, nations, 
races — 

Be fit—be fit! And once again, be fit! 




* 



CONTENTS 


Winning the Victoria Cross 

PAGE 

I 

The Way That He Took . 

27 

An Unqualified Pilot .... 

. 6s 

The Junk and the Dhow 

. 84 

His Gift. 

. 91 

The Master^Cook . 

. II8 

A Flight of Fact. 

. 123 

“Stalky”. 

. 149 

The Hour of the Angel .... 

182 

The Burning of the Sarah Sands . 

• 

(—( 
00 

The Last Lap . 

• 199 

The Parable of Boy Jones 

. 203 

A Departure . 

. 222 

The Bold Trentice .... 

. 227 

The Nurses . 

. 246 

The Son of His Father 

. 251 

An English School. 

. 291 

A Counting-Out Song .... 

• 319 


IX 









•Vv . 



('' '■ ■■ ' 

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$ 


V 





WINNING THE VICTORIA CROSS 




Land and Sea Tales 

For Boys and Girls 


WINNING THE VICTORIA CROSS 

T he history of the Victoria Cross has 
been told so often that it is only neces¬ 
sary to say that the Order was created by 
Queen Victoria on January 29th, 1856, in 
the year of the peace with Russia, when the 
new racing Cunard paddle-steamer Persia 
of three thousand tons was making thirteen 
knots an hour between England and Amer¬ 
ica, and all the world wondered at the ad¬ 
vance of civilization and progress. 

Any officer of the English Army, Navy, 
Reserve or Volunteer forces, from a duke to 
a negro, can wear on his left breast the little 
ugly bronze Maltese cross with the crowned 
lion atop and the inscription ‘‘For Valour” 
below, if he has only “performed some signal 
act of valour” or devotion to his country 
“in the presence of the enemy.” Nothing 


2 


LAND AND SEA TALES 


else makes any difference; for it is explicitly 
laid down in the warrant that ‘"neither rank, 
nor long service, nor wounds, nor any other 
circumstance whatsoever, save the merit of 
conspicuous bravery, shall be held to es¬ 
tablish a sufficient claim to this Order.” 

There are many kinds of bravery, and if 
one looks through the records of the four 
hundred and eleven men, living and dead, 
that have held the Victoria Cross before 
the Great War, one finds instances of every 
imaginable variety of heroism. 

There is bravery in the early morning, 
when it takes great courage even to leave 
warm blankets, let alone walk into dirt, cold 
and death; on foot and on horse; empty or 
fed; sick or well; coolness of brain^ that 
thinks out a plan at dawn and holds to it all 
through the long, murderous day; bravery 
of the mind that makes the jerking nerves 
hold still and do nothing except show a good 
example; sheer reckless strength that hacks 
through a crowd of amazed men and comes 
out grinning on the other side; enduring 
spirit that wears through a long siege, never 
losing heart or manners or temper; quick, 
flashing bravery that heaves a lighted shell 
overboard or rushes the stockade while 


THE VICTORIA CROSS 


3 


others are gaping at it, and the calculated 
craftsmanship that camps alone before the 
angry rifle-pit or shell-hole, and cleanly and 
methodically wipes out every soul in it. 

Before the Great War, England dealt with 
many different peoples, and, generally speak¬ 
ing, all of them, Zulu, Malay, Maori, 
Burman, Boer, the little hillsman of the 
Northeast Indian Frontier, Afreedi, Pathan, 
Biluch, the Arab of East Africa and the 
Sudanese of the North of Africa and the 
rest, played a thoroughly good game. For 
this we owe them many thanks; since they 
showed us every variety of climate and 
almost every variety of attack, from long- 
range fire to hand-to-hand scrimmage; ex¬ 
cept, of course, the ordered movements of 
Continental armies and the scientific ruin 
of towns. . . . That came later and on 

the largest scale. 

It is rather the fashion to look down on 
these little wars and to call them “military 
promenades” and so forth, but in reality 
no enemy can do much more than poison 
your wells, rush your camp, ambuscade 
you, kill you with his climate, fight you body 
to body, make you build your own means of 
communication under his fire, and horribly 


4 


LAND AND SEA TALES 


cut up your wounded. He may do this 
on a large or small scale, but the value of 
the teaching is the same. 

It is in these rough-and-tumble affairs 
that many of the first Crosses were won; 
and some of the records for the far-away 
Crimea and the Indian Mutiny are well 
worth remembering, if only to show that 
valour never varies. 

The Crimea was clean fighting as far as 
the enemy were concerned,—for the very old 
men say that no one could wish for better 
troops than the Russians of Inkerman and 
Alma,—but our own War Office then, as 
two generations later, helped the enemy 
with ignorant mismanagement and neglect. 
In the Mutiny of 1857 all India, Bengal and 
the North West Provinces, seemed to be 
crumbling like sand-bag walls in flood, 
and wherever there were three or four Eng¬ 
lishmen left, they had to kill or be killed 
till help came. Hundreds of Crosses must 
have been won then, had anybody had time 
to notice; for the average of work allowing 
for the improvements in man-killing ma¬ 
chinery was as high as in the Great War. 

For instance—this is a rather extensive 
and varied record—one man shut up in the 





THE VICTORIA CROSS 


S 


Residency at Lucknow stole out three times 
at the risk of his life to get cattle for the 
besieged to eat. Later, he extinguished a 
fire near a powder-magazine and a month 
afterwards put out another fire. Then he 
led twelve men to capture two guns which 
were wrecking the Residency at close 
range. Next day he captured an outlying 
position full of mutineers; three days later 
he captured another gun, and finished up 
by capturing a fourth. So he got his Cross. 

Another young man was a lieutenant in 
the Southern Mahratta Horse, and a full 
regiment of mutineers broke into his part 
of the world, upsetting the minds of the 
people. He collected some loyal troopers, 
chased the regiment eighty miles, stormed « 
the fort they had taken refuge in, and killed, 
captured or wounded every soul there. 

Then there was a lance corporal who 
afterwards rose to be Lieutenant-Colonel. 
He was the enduring type of man, for he won 
his Cross merely for taking a hand in every 
fight that came along through nearly seventy 
consecutive days. 

There were also two brothers who earned 
the Cross about six times between them for 
leading forlorn hopes and such-like. Like- 


6 


LAND AND SEA TALES 


wise there was a private of ‘‘persuasive 
powers and cheerful disposition,” so the 
record says, who was cut off with nine 
companions in a burning house while the 
mutineers were firing in at the windows. 
He, however, cheerfully persuaded the 
enemy to retire and in the end all his party 
were saved through his practical “cheer¬ 
fulness. ” He must have been a man worth 
knowing. 

And there was a little man in the Suther¬ 
land Highlanders—a private who eventually 
became a Major-General. In one attack 
near Lucknow he killed eleven men with 
his claymore, which is a heating sort of 
weapon to handle. 

Even he was not more thorough than two 
troopers who rode to the rescue of their 
Colonel, cut off and knocked down by 
mutineers. They helped him to rise, and 
they must have been annoyed, for the three 
of them killed all the mutineers—about 
fifty. 

Then there was a negro captain of the 
foretop, William Hall, R. N., who with two 
other negroes, Samuel Hodge and W. J. 
Gordon of the 4th and ist West Indian 
Infantry, came up the river with the Naval 




THE VICTORIA CROSS 


7 

Brigade from Calcutta to work big guns. 
They worked them so thoroughly that each 
got a Cross. They must have done a good 
deal, for no one is quite so crazy reckless as 
a West Indian negro when he is really 
excited. 

There was a man in the Mounted Police 
who with sixty horsemen charged one thou¬ 
sand mutineers and broke them up. And 
so the tale runs on. 

Three Bengal Civilian Government offi¬ 
cers were, I believe, the only strict non- 
combatants who ever received the Cross. 
As a matter of fact they had to fight with 
the rest, but the story of ‘‘Lucknow’’ 
Kavanagh’s adventures in disguise, of Ross 
Mangle’s heroism after the first attempt to 
relieve the Little House at Arrah had failed 
(Arrah was a place where ten white men 
and fifty-six loyal natives barricaded them¬ 
selves in a billiard-room in a garden and 
stood the siege of three regiments of muti¬ 
neers for three weeks), and of McDonnel’s 
cool-headedness in the retreat down the 
river, are things that ought to be told by 
themselves. Almost any one can fight well 
on the winning side, but those men who can 
patch up a thoroughly bad business and pull 


LAND AND SEA TALES 


S 

it off in some sort of shape, are most to be 
respected. 

Army chaplains and doctors are officially 
supposed to be non-combatants—they are 
not really so—but about twenty years after 
the Mutiny a chaplain was decorated under 
circumstances that made it impossible to 
overlook his bravery. Still, I do not think 
he quite cared for the publicity. He was a 
regimental chaplain—in action a chaplain 
is generally supposed to stay with or near 
the doctor—and he seems to have drifted 
up close to a cavalry charge, for he helped 
a wounded officer of the Ninth Lancers into 
an ambulance. He was then going about 
his business when he found two troopers 
who had tumbled into a water-course all 
mixed with their horses, and a knot of 
Afghans were hurrying to attend to them. 
The record says that he rescued both men, 
but the tale, as I heard it unofficially, de¬ 
clares that he found a revolver somewhere 
with which he did excellent work while the 
troopers were struggling out of the ditch. 
This seems very possible, for the Afghans do 
not leave disabled men without the strongest 
hint, and I know that in nine cases out of 
ten if you want a coherent account of what 





THE VICTORIA CROSS 


9 


happened in an action you had better ask 
the chaplain or the Roman Catholic priest 
of a battalion. 

But it is difficult to get details. I have 
met perhaps a dozen or so of V. C.’s, and in 
every case they explained that they did the 
first thing that came to their hand without 
worrying about alternatives. One man 
headed a charge into a mass of Afghans, who 
are very good fighters so long as they stay 
interested in their work, and cut down five 
of them. All he said was: ‘‘Well, they were 
there, and they couldn’t go away. What 
was a man to do.^ Write ’em a note and 
ask ’em to shift?” 

Another man I questioned was a doctor. 
Army doctors, by the way, have special 
opportunities for getting Crosses. Their 
duty compels them to stay somewhere 
within touch of the firing line, and most of 
them run right up and lie down, keeping an 
eye on the wounded. 

It is a heart-breaking thing for a doctor 
who has pulled a likely young private of 
twenty-three through typhoid fever and set 
him on his feet and watched him develop, 
to see the youngster wasted with a casual 
bullet. It must have been this feeling that 


lO 


LAND AND SEA TALES 


made my friend do the old, splendid thing 
that never grows stale—rescue a wounded 
man under fire. He won this Cross, but all 
he said was: didn’t want any unauthor¬ 

ized consultations—or amputations—while 
I was Medical Officer in charge. ’Tisn’t 
etiquette.” 

His own head was very nearly blown off 
as he was tying up an artery—for it was 
blind, bad bushfighting, with puffs of smoke 
popping in and out among the high grass 
and never a man visible—but he only 
grunted when his helmet was cracked across 
by a bullet, and went on tightening the 
tourniquet. 

As I have hinted, in most of our little af¬ 
fairs before the war, the enemy knew noth¬ 
ing about the Geneva Convention or the 
treatment of wounded, but fired at a doctor 
on his face value as a white man. One 
cannot blame them—it was their custom, 
but it was exceedingly awkward when our 
doctors took care of their wounded who did 
not understand these things and tried to 
go on fighting in hospital. 

There is an interesting tale of a wounded 
Sudanese—what our soldiers used to call a 


'‘fuzzy”—who was carefully attended to in 






THE VICTORIA CROSS 


II 


a hospital after a fight. As soon as he had 
any strength again, he proposed to a native 
orderly that they two should massacre all 
the infidel wounded in the other beds. The 
orderly did not see it; so, when the doctor 
came in he found the “Fuzzy” was trying 
to work out his plan single-handed. The 
doctor had a very unpleasant scuffle with 
that simple-minded man, but, at last, he 
slipped the chloroform-bag over his nose. 
The man understood bullets and was not 
afraid of them; but this magic smelly stuff 
that sent him to sleep, cowed him altogether, 
and he gave no more trouble in the ward. 

So a doctor’s life is always a little hazard¬ 
ous and, besides his professional duties, he 
may find himself senior officer in charge of 
what is left of the command, if the others 
have been shot down. As doctors are al¬ 
ways full of theories, I believe they rather 
like this chance of testing them. Sometimes 
doctors have run out to help a mortally 
wounded man of their battalion, because 
they know that he may have last messages 
to give, and it eases him to die with some 
human being holding his hand. This is a 
most noble thing to do under fire, because 
it means sitting still among bullets. Chap- 


12 


LAND AND SEA TALES 


lains have done it also, but it is part of what 
they reckon as their regular duty. 

Another V. C. of my acquaintance—he 
was anything but a doctor or a chaplain— 
once saved a trooper whose horse had been 
killed. His method was rather original. 
The man was on foot and the enemy—Zulus 
this time—was coming down at a run, and 
the trooper said, very decently, that he did 
not see his way to perilling his officer’s life 
by double-weighting the only available 
horse. 

To this his officer replied: “If you don’t 
get up behind me. I’ll get off and give you 
such a licking as you’ve never had in your 
life.” The man was more afraid of fists 
than of assagais, and the good horse pulled 
them both out of the scrape. Now by our 
Regulations an officer who insults or 
“threatens with violence” a subordinate in 
the Service is liable to lose his commission 
and to be declared “incapable of serving the 
King in any capacity,” but for some reason 
or other the trooper never reported his 
superior. 

The humour and the honour of fighting are 
by no means all on one side. A good many 
years ago there was a war in New Zealand 


THE VICTORIA CROSS 


13 


against the Maoris, who, though they 
tortured prisoners and occasionally ate a 
man, liked fighting for its own sake. One 
of their chiefs cut off a detachment of our 
men in a stockade where he might have 
starved them out, and eaten them at leisure 
later. But word reached him that they 
were short of provisions, and so he sent in a 
canoeful of pig and potatoes with the mes¬ 
sage that it was no fun to play that game with 
weak men, and he would be happy to meet 
them after rest and a full meal. There are 
many cases in which men, very young as a 
rule, have forced their way through a stock¬ 
ade of thorns that hook or bamboos that 
cut and held on in the face of heavy fire 
or just so long as served to bring up their 
comrades. Those who have done this say 
that getting in is exciting enough, but the 
bad time, when the minutes drag like hours, 
lies between the first scuffle with the angry 
faces in the smoke, and the “Hi, get out o’ 
this!” that shows that the others of our side 
are tumbling up behind. They say it is as 
bad as football when you get off the ball 
just as slowly as you dare, so that your own 
side may have time to come up. 

Most men, after they have been shot over 


LAND AND SEA TALES 


H 

a little, only want a lead to do good work; 
so the result of a young man’s daring is often 
out of all proportion to his actual perform¬ 
ances. 

Here is a case which never won notice 
because very few people talked about it— 
a case of the courage of Ulysses, one might 
say. 

A column of troops, heavily weighted with 
sick and wounded, had drifted into a bad 
place—a pass where an enemy, hidden be¬ 
hind rocks, were picking them off at known 
ranges, as they retreated. Half a battalion 
was acting as rear-guard—company after 
company facing about on the narrow road 
and trying to keep down the wicked, flicker¬ 
ing fire from the hillsides. And it was twi¬ 
light; and it was cold and raining; and it was 
altogether horrible for everyone. 

Presently, the rear-guard began to fire a 
little too quickly and to hurry back to the 
main body a little too soon, and the bearers 
put down the ambulances a little too often, 
and looked on each side of the road for 
possible cover. Altogether, there were the 
makings of a nasty little breakdown—and 
after that would come primitive slaughter. 

A boy whom I knew was acting command 





THE VICTORIA CROSS 


15 


of one company that was specially bored 
and sulky, and there were shouts from the 
column of “Hurry up! Hurry there!” 
neither necessary nor soothing. He kept his 
men in hand as well as he could, hitting 
down rifles when they fired wild, till some¬ 
one along the line shouted: “What on earth 
are you fellows waiting so long for.?” 

Then my friend—I am rather proud that 
he was my friend—hunted for his pipe and 
tobacco, filled the bowl in his pocket be¬ 
cause, he said afterwards, he didn’t want any 
one to see how his hand shook, lit a fuzee, 
and shouted back between very short puffs: 
“ Hold on a minute. Fm lighting my pipe.” 

There was a roar of rather crackly laugh¬ 
ter and the company joker said: “Since you 
are so pressin’, I think Fll ’ave a draw 
meself.” 

I don’t believe either pipe was smoked 
out, but—and this is a very big but—the 
little bit of acting steadied the company, 
and the news of it ran down the line, and 
even the wounded in the doolies laughed, 
and everyone felt better. Whether the 
enemy heard the laughing, or was impressed 
by the even “one-two-three-four” firing 
that followed it, will never be known, but 





i6 LAND AND SEA TALES 

the column came to camp at the regulation 
step and not at a run, with very few casual¬ 
ties. That is what one may call the courage 
of the much-enduring Ulysses, but the only 
comment that I ever heard on the affair was 
the boy’s own, and all he said was: ‘‘It was 
transpontine (which means theatrical), but 
necessary.” 

Of course he must have been a good boy 
from the beginning, for little bits of pure in¬ 
spiration seldom come to or are acted upon by 
slovens, self-indulgent or undisciplined peo¬ 
ple. I have not yet met one V. C. who had 
not strict notions about washing and shav¬ 
ing and keeping himself decent on his way 
through the civilized world, whatever he 
may have done outside it. 

Indeed, it is very curious, after one has 
known hundreds of young men and young 
officers, to sit still at a distance and watch 
them come forward to success in their pro¬ 
fession. Somehow, the clean and consid¬ 
erate man mostly seems to take hold of 
circumstances at the right end. 

One of the youngest of the V. C.’s of his 
time I used to know distantly as a beautiful 
being whom they called Aide-de-Camp to a 
big official in India. So far as strangers 


THE VICTORIA CROSS 


17 


could judge, his duties consisted in wearing 
a uniform faced with blue satin, and in 
seeing that everyone was looked after at 
the dances and dinners. He would wander 
about smiling, with eyes at the back of his 
head, introducing men who were strangers 
and a little uncomfortable, to girls whose 
dance-cards were rather empty; taking old 
and uninteresting women into supper, and 
tucking them into their carriages afterwards; 
or pleasantly steering white-whiskered na¬ 
tive officers all covered with medals and 
half-blind with confusion through the maze 
of a big levee into the presence of the Vice¬ 
roy or Commander-in-Chief, or whoever it 
was they were being presented to. 

After a few years of this work, his chance 
came, and he made the most of it. We 
were then smoking out a nest of caravan- 
raiders, slave-dealers, and general thieves 
who lived somewhere under the Karakoram 
Mountains among glaciers about sixteen 
thousand feet above sea-level. The mere 
road to the place was too much for many 
mules, for it ran by precipices and round 
rock-curves and over roaring, snow-fed 
rivers. 

The enemy—they were called Kanjuts— 


i8 LAND AND SEA TALES 

had fortified themselves in a place nearly as 
impregnable as nature and man could make 
it. One position was on the top of a cliff 
about twelve hundred feet high, whence 
they could roll stones directly on the head 
of any attacking force. Our men objected 
to the stones much more than to the rifle- 
fire. They were camped in a river-bed at 
the bottom of an icy pass with some three 
tiers of these cliff-like defences above them, 
and the Kanjuts on each tier were very well 
armed. To make all specially pleasant, it 
was December. 

This ex-aide-de-camp happened to be a 
good mountaineer, and he was told off with 
a hundred native troops, Goorkhas and 
Dogra Sikhs, to climb up into the top tier 
of the fortifications. The only way of ar¬ 
riving was to follow a sort of shoot in the 
cliff-face which the enemy had worn smooth 
by throwing rocks down. Even in daylight, 
in peace, and with good guides, it would 
have been fair mountaineering. 

He went up in the dark, by eye and guess, 
against some two thousand Kanjuts very 
much at war with him. When he had 
climbed eight hundred feet almost per¬ 
pendicular he found he had to come back. 


THE VICTORIA CROSS 


19 


because even he and his Goorkha cragsmen 
could find no way. 

He returned to the river-bed and tried 
again in a new place, working his men up 
between avalanches of stones that slid along 
and knocked people over. When he strug¬ 
gled to the top he had to take his men into 
the forts with the bayonet and the kukri, 
the little Goorkha knife. The attack was 
so utterly bold and unexpected that it broke 
the hearts of the enemy and practically 
ended the campaign; and if you could see 
the photograph of the place you would 
understand why. 

It was hard toenail and fingernail crag¬ 
climbing under fire, and the men behind 
him were not regulars, but what are called 
Imperial Service troops—men raised by the 
semi-independent kings and used to defend 
the frontier. They enjoyed themselves im¬ 
mensely, and the little aide-de-camp got a 
deserved Victoria Cross. The courage of 
Ulysses again; for he had to think as he 
climbed, and until he was directly under¬ 
neath the fortifications, one chance-hopping 
boulder might just have planed his men off 
all along the line. 

But there is a heroism beyond all, for 


20 


LAND AND SEA TALES 


which no Victoria Cross is ever given, be¬ 
cause there is no official enemy nor any 
sort of firing, except one volley in the early 
morning at some spot where the noise does 
not echo into the newspapers. 

It is necessary from time to time to send 
unarmed men into No Man’s Land and the 
Back of Beyond across the Khudajantakhan 
(The Lord-knows-where) Mountains, just 
to find out what is going on there among 
people who some day or other may become 
dangerous enemies. 

The understanding is that if the men re¬ 
turn with their reports so much the better 
for them. They may then receive some 
sort of decoration, given, so far as the public 
can make out, for no real reason. If they 
do not come back, and people disappear very 
mysteriously at the Back of Beyond, that 
is their own concern and no questions will 
be asked, and no enquiries made. 

They tell a tale of one man who, some 
years ago, strayed into No Man’s Land to 
see how things were, and met a very amiable 
set of people, who asked him to a round of 
dinners and lunches and dances. And all 
that time he knew, and they knew that he 
knew, that his hosts were debating between 


THE VICTORIA CROSS 


21 


themselves whether they should suffer him 
to live till next morning, and if they de¬ 
cided not to let him live, in what way they 
should wipe him out most quietly. 

The only consideration that made them 
hesitate was that they could not tell from 
his manner whether there were five hundred 
Englishmen within a few miles of him or no 
Englishmen at all within five hundred miles 
of him; and, as matters stood at that mo¬ 
ment, they could not very well go out to 
look and make sure. 

So he danced and dined with those pleas¬ 
ant, merry folk,—all good friends,—and 
talked about hunting and shooting and so 
forth, never knowing when the polite serv¬ 
ants behind his chair would turn into the 
firing-party. At last his hosts decided, 
without rude words said, to let him go; and 
when they made up their minds they did 
it very handsomely; for, you must remember, 
there is no malice borne on either side of 
that game. 

They gave him a farewell banquet and 
drank his health, and he thanked them for 
his delightful visit, and they said: “So glad 
you’re glad —au revoir^^ and he came away 
looking a little bored. 





22 


LAND AND SEA TALES 


Later on, so the tale runs, his hosts dis¬ 
covered that their guest had been given 
up for lost by his friends in England where 
no one ever expected to see him again. 
Then they were sorry that they had not 
put him against a wall and shot him. 

That is a case of the cold-blooded courage 
worked up to after years of training—cour¬ 
age of mind forcing the body through an 
unpleasant situation for the sake of the 
game. 

When all is said and done, courage of 
mind is the finest thing any one can hope to 
attain to. A weak or undisciplined soul is 
apt to become reckless under strain (which 
is only being afraid the wrong way about), 
or to act for its own immediate advantage. 
For this reason the Victoria Cross is 
jealously guarded, and if there be suspicion 
that the man is playing to the gallery or out 
pot-hunting for medals, as they call it, he 
is often left to head his charges and rescue 
his wounded all over again as a guarantee 
of good faith. 

In the Great War there was very little 
suspicion, or chance, of gallery-play for the 
V. C., because there was ample opportunity 
and, very often, strong necessity, for a man 



THE VICTORIA CROSS 


23 


to repeat his performances several times 
over. Moreover, he was generally facing 
much deadlier weapons than mere single 
rifles or edged tools, and the rescue of 
wounded under fire was, by so much, a more 
serious business. But one or two War 
V. C.’s of my acquaintance have told me 
that if you can manage the little matter of 
keeping your head, it is not as difficult as it 
sounds to get on the blind side of a machine 
gun, or to lie out under its lowest line of 
fire where, they say, you are “quite com¬ 
fortable if you don’t fuss.” Also, every 
V. C. of the Great War I have spoken to 
has been rather careful to explain that he 
won his Cross because what he did hap¬ 
pened to be done when and where someone 
could notice it. Thousands of men they 
said did just the same, but in places where 
there were no observers. And that is true; 
for the real spirit of the Army changes very 
little through the years. 

Men are taught to volunteer for anything 
and everything; going out quietly after, 
not before, the authorities have filled their 
place. They are also instructed that it is 
cowardly, it is childish, and it is cheating 
to neglect or scamp the plain work im- 


24 


LAND AND SEA TALES 


mediately in front of them, the duties they 
are trusted to do, for the sake of stepping 
aside to snatch at what to an outsider may 
resemble fame or distinction. Above all, 
their own hard equals, whose opinion is the 
sole opinion worth having, are always sitting 
unofficially in judgment on them. 

The Order itself is a personal decoration, 
and the honour and glory of it belongs to the 
wearer; but he can only win it by forgetting 
himself, his own honour and glory, and by 
working for something beyond and outside 
and apart from his own self. And there 
seems to be no other way in which you get 
anything in this world worth the keeping. 


THE WAY THAT HE TOOK 


« 


THE WAY THAT HE TOOK 


Almost every word of this story is based on fact. The 
Boer War of i8gg—igo2 was a very small one as wars 
were reckoned, and was fought without any particular 
malice, but it taught our men the practical value of 
scouting in the field. They were slow to learn at the 
outset, and it cost them many unnecessary losses, as is 
always the case when men think they can do their 
work without taking trouble beforehand. 

T he guns of the Field-Battery were am¬ 
bushed behind white-thorned mimosas, 
scarcely taller than their wheels, that marked 
the line of a dry nullah; and the camp pre¬ 
tended to find shade under a clump of gums 
planted as an experiment by some Minister 
of Agriculture. One small hut, reddish 
stone with a tin roof, stood where the single 
track of the railway split into a siding. A 
rolling plain of red earth, speckled with 
loose stones and sugar-bush, ran northward 
to the scarps and spurs of a range of little 
hills—all barren and exaggerated in the 
heat-haze. Southward, the level lost itself 
in a tangle of scrub-furred hillocks, up- 



28 LAND AND SEA TALES 

heaved without purpose or order, seared and 
blackened by the strokes of the careless 
lightning, seamed down their sides with 
spent watercourses, and peppered from base 
to summit with stones—riven, piled, scat¬ 
tered stones. Far away, to the eastward, 
a line of blue-grey mountains, peaked and 
horned, lifted itself over the huddle of the 
tortured earth. It was the only thing that 
held steady through the liquid mirage. The 
nearer hills detached themselves from the 
plain, and swam forward like islands in 
a milky ocean. While the Major stared 
through puckered eyelids. Leviathan him¬ 
self waded through the far shallows of it— 
a black and formless beast. 

‘‘That,” said the Major, “must be the guns 
coming back.” He had sent out two guns, 
nominally for exercise—actually to show the 
loyal Dutch that there was artillery near the 
railway if any patriot thought fit to tam¬ 
per with it. Chocolate smears, looking as 
though they had been swept with a besom 
through the raffle of stones, wandered 
across the earth—unbridged, ungraded, un- 
metalled. They were the roads to the brown 
mud huts, one in each valley, that were 
officially styled farm-houses. At very long 




THE WAY THAT HE TOOK 29 

intervals a dusty Cape-cart or a tilted wagon 
would move along them, and men, dirtier 
than the dirt, would come to sell fruit or 
scraggy sheep. At night the farm-houses were 
lighted up in a style out of all keeping with 
Dutch economy; the scrub would light itself 
on some far headland, and the house-lights 
twinkled in reply. Three or four days later 
the Major would read bad news in the Cape¬ 
town papers thrown to him from the passing 
troop trains. 

The guns and their escort changed from 
Leviathan to the likeness of wrecked boats, 
their crews struggling beside them. Pres¬ 
ently they took on their true shape, and 
lurched into camp amid clouds of dust. 

The Mounted Infantry escort set about 
its evening meal; the hot air filled with the 
scent of burning wood; sweating men, 
rough-dried sweating horses with wisps of 
precious forage; the sun dipped behind the 
hills, and they heard the whistle of a train 
from the south. 

“What’s that?” said the Major, slipping 
into his coat. The decencies had not yet left 
him. 

“Ambulance train,” said the Captain of 
Mounted Infantry, raising his glasses. “ Td 


30 


LAND AND SEA TALES 


like to talk to a woman again, but it won’t 
stop here. ... It is stopping, though, 
and making a beastly noise. Let’s look.” 

The engine had sprung a leaky tube, and 
ran lamely into the siding. It would be 
two or three hours at least before she could 
be patched up. 

Two doctors and a couple of Nursing Sis¬ 
ters stood on the rear platform of a carriage. 
The Major explained the situation, and in¬ 
vited them to tea. 

‘‘We were just going to ask you” said the 
medical Major of the ambulance train. 

“No, come to our camp. Let the men 
see a woman again!” he pleaded. 

Sister Dorothy, old in the needs of war, for 
all her twenty-four years, gathered up a tin 
of biscuits and some bread and butter new 
cut by the orderlies. Sister Margaret 
picked up the tea-pot, the spirit-lamp, and 
a water-bottle. 

“Capetown water,” she said with a nod. 
“Filtered too. / know Karroo water.” 
She jumped down lightly on to the ballast. 

“What do you know about the Karroo, 
Sister?” said the Captain of Mounted In¬ 
fantry, indulgently, as a veteran of a 
month’s standing. He understood that all 


THE WAY THAT HE TOOK 31 

that desert as it seemed to him was called 
by that name. 

She laughed. “This is my home. I was 
born out they-ah—^just behind that big 
range of hills—out Oudtshorn way. It’s only 
sixty miles from here. Oh, how good it is!” 

She slipped the Nurses’ cap from her 
head, tossed it through the open car-window, 
and drew a breath of deep content. With 
the sinking of the sun the dry hills had 
taken life and glowed against the green 
of the horizon. They rose up like jewels in 
the utterly clear air, while the valleys be¬ 
tween flooded with purple shadow. A mile 
away, stark-clear, withered rocks showed as 
though one could touch them with the hand, 
and the voice of a native herdboy in charge 
of a flock of sheep came in clear and sharp 
over twice that distance. Sister Margaret 
devoured the huge spaces with eyes unused 
to shorter ranges, snuffed again the air that 
has no equal under God’s skies, and turning 
to her companion, said:—“What do you 
think of it ?” 

“I am afraid I’m rather singular,” he re¬ 
plied. “Most of us hate the Karroo. I 
used to, but it grows on one somehow. I 
suppose it’s the lack of fences and roads 



32 


LAND AND SEA TALES 


that’s so fascinating. And when one gets 
back from the railway-” 

“You’re quite right,” she said, with an 
emphatic stamp of her foot. “ People come 
to Matjesfontein—ugh!—with their lungs, 
and they live opposite the railway station 
and that new hotel, and they think that's 
the Karroo. They say there isn’t anything 
in it. It’s full of life when you really get 
into it. You see that.^ I’m so glad. 
D’you know, you’re the first English officer 
I’ve heard who has spoken a good word for 
my country.?” 

“I’m glad I pleased you,” said the Cap¬ 
tain, looking into Sister Margaret’s black- 
lashed grey eyes under the heavy brown 
hair shot with grey where it rolled back 
from the tanned forehead. This kind of 
nurse was new in his experience. The 
average Sister did not lightly stride over 
rolling stones, and—^was it possible that her 
easy pace up-hill was beginning to pump 
him.? As she walked, she hummed joy¬ 
ously to herself, a queer catchy tune of one 
line several times repeated:— 

Vat jou goet en trek, Ferriera, 

Vat jou goet en trek. 




THE WAY THAT HE TOOK 33 

It ran off with a little trill that sounded 
like, 

Zwaar draa, alle en de ein leant; 

Jannie met de hoepel bein!^ 

“Listen!” she said, suddenly. “What 
was that ?” 

“It must be a wagon on the road. I 
heard the whip, I think.” 

“Yes, but you didn’t hear the wheels, 
did you? It’s a little bird that makes just 
that noise ‘Whe-ew’!” she duplicated it 
perfectly. “We call it”—she gave the 
Dutch name, which did not, of course, abide 
with the Captain. “We must have given 
him a scare! You hear him in the early 
mornings when you are sleeping in the 
wagons. It’s just like the noise of a whip¬ 
lash, isn’t it?” 

They entered the Major’s tent a little be¬ 
hind the others, who were discussing the 
scanty news of the Campaign. 

“Oh, no,” said Sister Margaret coolly, 
bending over the spirit-lamp, “the Trans- 
vaalers will stay round Kimberley and try 

^ Pack your kit and trek, Ferriera, 

Pack your kit and trek. 

A long pull, all on one side, 

Johnnie with the lame leg. 




34 


LAND AND SEA TALES 


to put Rhodes in a cage. But, of course, if 
a commando gets through to De Aar they 
will all rise- 

‘‘You think so. Sister.?” said the medical 
Major, deferentially. 

“I know so. They will rise anywhere in 
the Colony if a commando comes actually 
to them. Presently they will rise in Prieska 
—if it is only to steal the forage at Van 
Wyk’sVlei. Why not.?” 

“We get most of our opinions of the war 
from Sister Margaret,” said the civilian 
doctor of the train. “It’s all new to me, 
but, so far, all her prophecies have come 
true. 

A few months ago that doctor had retired 
from practice to a country house in rainy 
England, his fortune made and, as he tried 
to believe, his life-work done. Then the 
bugles blew, and, rejoicing at the change, he 
found himself, his experience, and his fine 
bedside manner, buttoned up in a black- 
tabbed khaki coat, on a hospital train that 
covered eleven hundred miles a week, car¬ 
ried a hundred wounded each trip and 
dealt him more experience in a month than 
he had ever gained in a year of home 
practice. 



THE WAY THAT HE TOOK 35 

Sister Margaret and the Captain of 
Mounted Infantry took their cups outside 
the tent. The Captain wished to know 
something more about her. Till that day 
he had believed South Africa to be populated 
by sullen Dutchmen and slack-waisted 
women; and in some clumsy fashion be¬ 
trayed the belief. 

“Of course, you don’t see any others 
where you are,” said Sister Margaret, 
leniently, from her camp-chair. “They 
are all at the war. I have two brothers, and 
a nephew, my sister’s son, and—oh, I can’t 
count my cousins.” She flung her hands 
outward with a curiously un-English gesture. 
“And then, too, you have never been off the 
railway. You have only seen Capetown? 
All the schel—all the useless people are 
there. You should see our country be¬ 
yond the ranges—out Oudtshorn way. We 
grow fruit and vines. It is much prettier, 
/ think, than Paarl.” 

“I’d like to very much. I may be sta¬ 
tioned in Africa after the war is over.” 

“Ah, but we know the English officers. 
They say that this is a ‘beastly country,’ 
and they do not know how to—to be nice to 
people. Shall I tell you? There was an 




36 LAND AND SEA TALES 

aide-de-camp at Government House three 
years ago. He sent out invitations to din¬ 
ner to Piet—to Mr. Van der Hooven’s wife. 
And she had been dead eight years, and Van 
der Hooven—he has the big farms round 
Craddock—just then was thinking of chang¬ 
ing his politics, you see—he was against the 
Government,—and taking a house in Cape¬ 
town, because of the Army meat contracts. 
That was why, you see?” 

“I see,” said the Captain, to whom this 
was all Greek. 

Piet was a little angry—not much—but 
he went to Capetown, and that aide-de- 
camp had made a joke about it—about in¬ 
viting the dead woman—in the Civil Service 
Club. You see? So of course the opposi¬ 
tion there told Van der Hooven that the 
aide-de-camp had said he could not re¬ 
member all the old Dutch vrows that had 
died, and so Piet Van der Hooven went 
away angry, and now he is more hot than 
ever against the Government. If you stay 
with us you must not be like that. You see ?” 

‘H won’t,” said the Captain, seriously. 
‘‘What a night it is. Sister!” He dwelt 
lovingly on the last word, as men did in 
South Africa. 










THE WAY THAT HE TOOK 37 

The soft darkness had shut upon them 
unawares and the world had vanished. 
There was not so much breeze as a slow 
motion of the whole dry air under the vault 
of the immeasurably deep heavens. “Look 
up/’ said the Captain; “doesn’t it make you 
feel as if we were tumbling down into the 
stars—all upside down?” 

“Yes,” said Sister Margaret, tilting her 
head back. “It is always like that. I 
know. And those are our stars.” 

They burned with a great glory, large as 
the eyes of cattle by lamp-light; planet after 
planet of the mild Southern sky. As the 
Captain said, one seemed to be falling from 
out the hidden earth sheer through space, 
between them. 

“Now, when I was little,” Sister Mar¬ 
garet began very softly, “there was one 
day in the week at home that was all our 
own. We could get up as soon as we liked 
after midnight, and there was the basket in 
the kitchen—our food. We used to go out 
at three o’clock sometimes, my two brothers, 
my sisters, and the two little ones—out 
into the Karroo for all the day. All—the 
—long—day. First we built a fire, and 
then we made a kraal for the two little ones 







38 LAND AND SEA TALES 

—a kraal of thorn bushes so that they should 
not be bitten by anything. You see.^ 
Often we made the kraal before morning— 
when those”—she jerked her firm chin at 
the stars—‘‘were just going out. Then we 
old ones went hunting lizards—and snakes 
and birds and centipedes, and all that sort 
of nice thing. Our father collected them. 
He gave us half-a-crown for a spuugh- 
slange—a kind of snake. You see.^” ! 

“How old were you.?” Snake-hunting 
did not strike the Captain as a safe amuse¬ 
ment for the young. 

“I was eleven then—or ten, perhaps, and 
the little ones were two and three. Why? 
Then we came back to eat, and we sat under 
a ;pock all afternoon. It was hot, you see, 
and we played—we played with the stones 
and the flowers. You should see our Karroo 
in spring! All flowers! All our flowers! 
Then we came home, carrying the little ones 
on our backs asleep—came home through 
the dark—just like this night. That was 
our own day! Oh, the good days! We 
used to watch the meer-cats playing, too, 
and the little buck. When I was at Guy’s, 
learning to nurse how home-sick that made 






THE WAY THAT HE TOOK 39 

'‘But what a splendid open-air life!” said 
the Captain. 

“Where else is there to live except the 
open air.?” said Sister Margaret, looking off 
into twenty thousand square miles of it with 
eyes that burned. 

“You’re quite right.” 

“Em sorry to interrupt you two,” said 
Sister Dorothy, who had been talking to the 
gunner Major; “but the guard says we shall 
be ready to go in a few minutes. Major 
Devine and Dr. Johnson have gone down 
already.” 

“Very good. Sister. We’ll follow.” The 
Captain rose unwillingly and made for the 
worn path from the camp to the rail. 

“Isn’t there another way.?” said Sister 
Margaret. Her grey nursing gown glim¬ 
mered like some big moth’s wing. 

“No. I’ll bring a lantern. It’s quite 
safe.” 

“I did not think of that,^' she said with a 
laugh; “only we never come home by the 
way we left it when we live in the Karroo. 
If any one—suppose you had dismissed a 
Kaffir, or got him sjamboked,^ and he saw 
you go out.? He would wait for you to come 


^Beaten. 




40 


LAND AND SEA TALES 


back on a tired horse, and then. . . . 

You see ? But, of course, in England where 
the road is all walled, it is different. How 
funny! Even when we were little we learned 
never to come home the way we went out.’’ 

‘‘Very good,” said the Captain, obedi¬ 
ently. It made the walk longer, and he 
approved of that. 

“That’s a curious sort of woman,” said 
the Captain to the Major, as they smoked a 
lonely pipe together when the train had 
gone. 

“ You seemed to think so.” 

“Well—I couldn’t monopolize Sister Dor¬ 
othy in the presence of my senior officer. 
What was she like.^” 

“Oh, it came out that she knew a lot of 
my people in London. She’s the daughter 

of a chap in the next county to us, too.” 

* * * * 

The General’s flag still flew before his un¬ 
struck tent to amuse Boer binoculars, and 
loyal lying correspondents still telegraphed 
accounts of his daily work. But the Gen¬ 
eral himself had gone to join an army a 
hundred miles away; drawing off from time 
to time every squadron, gun and company 
that he dared. His last words to the few 


THE WAY THAT HE TOOK 41 

troops he left behind covered the entire 
situation. 

“If you can bluff ’em till we get round up 
north to tread on their tails, it’s all right. 
If you can’t, they’ll probably eat you up. 
Hold ’em as long as you can.” 

So the skeleton remnant of the brigade 
lay close among the kopjes till the Boers, 
not seeing them in force on the sky-line, 
feared that they might have learned the 
rudiments of war. They rarely disclosed a 
gun, for the reason that they had so few; 
they scouted by fours and fives instead of 
clattering troops and chattering companies, 
and where they saw a too obvious way 
opened to attack they, lacking force to 
drive it home, looked elsewhere. Great 
was the anger in the Boer commando across 
the river—the anger and unease. 

“The reason is they have so few men,” 
the loyal farmers reported, all fresh from 
selling melons to the camp, and drinking 
Queen Victoria’s health in good whisky. 
“They have no horses—only what they call 
Mounted Infantry. They are afraid of us. 
They try to make us friends by giving us 
brandy. Come on and shoot them. Then 
you will see us rise and cut the line.” 




42 


LAND AND SEA TALES 


‘‘Yes, we know how you rise, you Colon¬ 
ials,” said the Boer commandant above his 
pipe. “We know what has come to all your 
promises from Beaufort West, and even 
from De Aar. We do the work—all the 
work,'—and you kneel down with your 
parsons and pray for our success. What 
good is that ? The President has told you a 
hundred times God is on our side. Why do 
you worry Him.^ We did not send you 
Mausers and ammunition for that.” 

“We kept our commando-horses ready 
for six months—and forage is very dear. 
We sent all our young men,” said an hon¬ 
oured member of local society. 

“A few here and a few servants there. 
What is that.^ You should have risen down 
to the sea all together.” 

“But you were so quick. Why did not 
you wait the year.? We were not ready, 
Jan.” 

“That is a lie. All you Cape people lie. 
You want to save your cattle and your 
farms. Wait till our flag flies from here 
to Port Elizabeth and you shall see what you 
will save when the President learns how you 
have risen—you clever Cape people.” 

The saddle-coloured sons of the soil looked 



THE WAY THAT HE TOOK 43 

down their noses. "lYes—it is true. Some 
of our farms are close to the line. They say 
at Worcester and in the Paarl that many 
soldiers are always coming in from the sea. 
One must think of that—at least till they 
are shot. But we know there are very few 
in front of you here. Give them what you 
gave the fools at Stormberg, and you will 
see how we can shoot rooineks.”^ 

“Yes. I know that cow. She is always 
going to calve. Get away. I am answer- 
able to the President—not to the Cape.’’ 

But the information stayed in his mind, 
and, not being a student of military works, 
he made a plan to suit. The tall kopje on 
which the English had planted their helio¬ 
station commanded the more or less open 
plain to the northward, but did not com¬ 
mand the five-mile belt of broken country 
between that and the outmost English 
pickets, some three miles from camp. The 
Boers had established themselves very com¬ 
fortably among these rock-ridges and scrub- 
patches, and the “great war” drizzled down 
to long shots and longer stalking. The 
young bloods wanted rooineks to shoot, and 
said so. 


^Red necks—English soldiers. 




44 


LAND AND SEA TALES 


‘‘See here,” quoth the experienced Jan 
van Staden that evening to as many of his 
commando as cared to listen. “You young¬ 
sters from the Colony talk a lot. Go and 
turn the rooineks out of their kopjes to¬ 
night. Eh? Go and take their bayonets 
from them and stick them into them. Eh? 
You don’t go!” He laughed at the silence 
round the fire. 

“Jan—^Jan,” said one young man ap¬ 
pealingly, “don’t make mock of us.” 

“I thought that was what you wanted so 
badly. No? Then listen to me. Behind 
us the grazing is bad. We have too many 
cattle here.” (They had been stolen from 
farmers who had been heard to express fears 
of defeat.) “To-morrow, by the sky’s look, 
it will blow a good wind. So, to-morrow 
early I shall send all our cattle north to the 
new grazing. That will make a great dust 
for the English to see from their helio 
yonder.” He pointed to a winking night- 
lamp stabbing the darkness with orders 
to an out-lying picket. “With the cattle 
we will send all our women. Yes, all the 
women and the wagons we can spare, and 
the lame ponies and the broken carts we 
took from Andersen’s farm. That will 



THE WAY THAT HE TOOK 45 

make a big dust—the dust of our retreat. 
Do you see?’’ 

They saw and approved, and said so. 

‘‘Good. There are many men here who 
want to go home to their wives. I shall let 
thirty of them away for a week. Men who 
wish to do this will speak to me to-night.” 
(This meant that Jan needed money, and 
furlough would be granted on strictly busi¬ 
ness lines.) “These men will look after the 
cattle and see that they make a great dust 
for a long way. They will run about behind 
the cattle showing their guns, too. So that^ 
if the wind blows well, will be our retreat. 
The cattle will feed beyond Koopman’s 
Kop.” 

“No good water there,” growled a farmer 
who knew that section. “Better go on to 
Zwartpan. It is always sweet at Zwart- 
pan.” 

The commando discussed the point for 
twenty minutes. It was much more serious 
than shooting rooineks. Then Jan went on: 

“When the rooineks see our retreat they 
may all come into our kopjes together. If 
so, good. But it is tempting God to expect 
such a favour. / think they will first send 
some men to scout.” He grinned broadly. 



46 LAND AND SEA TALES 

using the English word. ^'Almighty! To 
scoot! They have none of that new sort of 
rooinek that they used at Sunnyside.’’ (Jan 
meant an incomprehensible animal from a 
place called Australia across the Southern 
seas who played what they knew of the war- 
game to kill.) “They have only some 
Mounted Infantry,”—again he used the 
English words. “They were once a Red- 
jacket regiment, so their scoots will stand 
up bravely to be shot at.” 

“Good—good, we will shoot them,” said 
a youngster from Stellenbosch, who had 
come up on free pass as a Capetown excur¬ 
sionist just before the war to a farm on the 
border, where his aunt was taking care of his 
horse and rifle. 

“But if you shoot their scoots I will 
sjambok you myself,” said Jan, amid roars 
of laughter. “We must let them all come 
into the kopjes to look for us; and I pray 
God will not allow any of us to be tempted 
to shoot them. They will cross the ford in 
front of their camp. They will come along 
the road—so!” He imitated with ponder¬ 
ous arms the Army style of riding. “They 
will trot up the road this way and that way” 
—here he snaked his hard finger in the dust 



THE WAY THAT HE TOOK 47 

—‘‘between kopjes, till they come here, 
where they can see the plain and all our 
cattle going away. Then they will all come 
in close together. Perhaps they will even 
fix their bayonets. We shall be up here 
behind the rock—there and there.” He 
pointed to two flat-topped kopjes, one on 
either side of the road, some eight hundred 
yards away. “That is our place. We will 
go there before sunrise. Remember we 
must be careful to let the very last of the 
rooineks pass before we begin shooting. 
They will come along a little careful at first. 
But we do not shoot. Then they will see 
our fires and the fresh horse-dung, so they 
will know we have gone on. They will run 
together and talk and point and shout in 
this nice open place. Then we begin shoot¬ 
ing them from above.” 

“Yes, uncle, but if the scouts see nothing 
and there are no shots and we let them go 
back quite quiet, they will think it was a 
trick. Perhaps the main body may never 
come here at all. Even rooineks learn in 
time—and so we may lose even the scouts.” 

“I have thought of that too,” said Jan, 
with slow contempt, as the Stellenbosch boy 
delivered his shot. “If you had been my 



48 LAND AND SEA TALES 

son I should have sjamboked you more when 
you were a youngster. I shall put you and 
four or five more on the Nek [the pass], 
where the road comes from their camp into 
these kopjes. You go there before it is 
light. Let the scoots pass in or I will 
sjambok you myself. When the scoots 
come back after seeing nothing here, then 
you may shoot them, but not till they have 
passed the Nek and are on the straight road 
to their camp again. Do you understand? 
Repeat what I have said, so that I shall 
know.” 

The youth obediently repeated his orders. 

‘‘ Kill their officers if you can. If not, no 
great matter, because the scoots will run to 
camp with the news that our kopjes are 
empty. Their helio-station will see your 
party trying to hold the’Nek so hard—and 
all that time they will see our dust out yon¬ 
der, and they will think you are the rear¬ 
guard, and they will think we are escaping. 
They will be angry.” 

“Yes—yes, uncle, we see,” from a dozen 
elderly voices. 

“But this calf does not. Be silent! 
They will shoot at you, Niclaus, on the Nek, 
because they will think you are to cover our 


THE WAY THAT HE TOOK 49 

getting away. They will shell the Nek. 
They will miss. You will then ride away. 
All the rooineks will come after you, hot and 
in a hurry—perhaps, even, with their can¬ 
non. They will pass our fires and our 
fresh horse-dung. They will come here 
as their scoots came. They will see the 
plain so full of our dust. They will say, 
‘The scoots spoke truth. It is a full re¬ 
treat. ’ Then we up there on the rocks will 
shoot, and it will be like the fight at Storm- 
berg in daytime. Do you understand now?** 

Those of the commando directly in¬ 
terested lit new pipes and discussed the 
matter in detail till midnight. 

Next morning the opeiations began with, 
if one may borrow the language of some 
official despatches—“the precision of well- 
oiled machinery.” 

The helio-station reported the dust of the 
wagons and the movements of armed men 
in full flight across the plain beyond the 
kopjes. A Colonel, newly appointed from 
England, by reason of his seniority, sent 
forth a dozen Mounted Infantry under com¬ 
mand of a Captain. Till a month ago they 
had been drilled by a cavalry instructor, who 
taught them “shock” tactics to the music 



LAND AND SEA TALES 


SO 

of trumpets. They knew how to advance 
in echelon of squadrons, by cat’s cradle of 
troops, in quarter column of stable-litter, 
how to trot, to gallop, and above all to 
charge. They knew how to sit their horses 
unremittingly, so that at the day’s end they 
might boast how many hours they had been 
in the saddle without relief, and they learned 
to rejoice in the clatter and stamp of a troop 
moving as such, and therefore audible five 
miles away. 

They trotted out two and two along the 
farm road, that trailed lazily through the 
wind-driven dust; across the half-dried ford 
to a nek between low stony hills leading 
into the debatable land. (Vrooman of 
Emmaus from his neatly bushed hole noted 
that one man carried a sporting Lee- 
Enfield rifle with a short fore-end. Vroo¬ 
man of Emmaus argued that the owner of it 
was the officer to be killed on his return, and 
went to sleep.) They saw nothing except 
a small flock of sheep and a Kaffir herds¬ 
man who spoke broken English with curious 
fluency. He had heard that the Boers had 
decided to retreat on account of their sick 
and wounded. The Captain in charge of 
the detachment turned to look at the helio- 


THE WAY THAT HE TOOK 51 

station four miles away. ‘'Hurry up/’ 
said the dazzling flash. “Retreat appar¬ 
ently continues, but suggest you make 
sure. Quick.” 

“Ye-es,” said the Captain, a shade bit¬ 
terly, as he wiped the sweat from a sun¬ 
skinned nose. “You want me to come back 
and report all clear. If anything happens 
it will be my fault. If they get away it will 
be my fault for disregarding the signal. I 
love officers who suggest and advise, and 
want to make their reputations in twenty 
minutes.” 

“’Don’t see much ’ere, sir,” said the ser¬ 
geant, scanning the bare cup of the hollow 
where a dust-devil danced alone. 

“No? We’ll go on.” 

“If we get among these steep ’ills we lose 
touch of the ’elio.” 

“Very likely. Trot.” 

The rounded mounds grew to spiked 
kopjes, heart-breaking to climb under a hot 
sun at four thousand feet above sea level. 
This is where the scouts found their spurs 
peculiarly useful. 

Jan van Staden had thoughtfully allowed 
the invading force a front of two rifle-shots 
or four thousand yards, and they kept a 


LAND AND SEA TALES 


S2 

thousand yards within his estimate. Ten 
men strung over two miles feel that they 
have explored all the round earth. 

They saw stony slopes combing over in 
scrub, narrow valleys clothed with stone, 
low ridges of splintered stone, and tufts of 
brittle-stemmed bush. An irritating wind, 
split up by many rocky barriers, cuffed them 
over the ears and slapped them in the face 
at every turn. They came upon an aban¬ 
doned camp fire, a little fresh horse-dung, 
and an empty ammunition-box splintered 
up for fire-wood, an old boot, and a stale 
bandage. 

A few hundred yards farther along the 
road a battered Mauser had been thrown 
into a bush. The glimmer of its barrel drew 
the scouts from the hillside, and here the 
road after passing between two flat-topped 
kopjes entered a valley nearly half a mile 
wide, rose slightly, and over the nek of a 
ridge gave clear view across the windy plain 
northward. 

^‘They’re on the dead run, for sure,’^ 
said a trooper. ‘‘Here’s their fire and their 
litter and their guns, and that’s where 
they’re bolting to.” He pointed over the 
ridge to the bellying dust cloud a mile long. 


THE WAY THAT HE TOOK 53 

A vulture high overhead flickered down, 
steadied herself, and hung motionless. 

“See!’’ said Jan van Staden from the 
rocks above the road, to his waiting com¬ 
mando. “It turns like a well-oiled wheel. 
They look where they need not look, but 
hercy where they should look on both sides, 
they look at our retreat—straight before 
them. It is tempting our people too much. 
I pray God no one will shoot them.” 

“That’s about the size of it,” said the 
Captain, rubbing the dust from his binocu¬ 
lars. “Boers on the run. I expect they 
find their main line of retreat to the north is 
threatened. We’ll get back and tell the 
camp.” He wheeled his pony and his eye* 
traversed the flat-topped kopje commanding' 
the road. The stones at its edge seemed to 
be piled with less than Nature’s carelessness. 

“That ’ud be a dashed ugly place if it 
were occupied—and that other one, too. 
Those rocks aren’t five hundred yards from 
the road, either of ’em. Hold on, sergeant, 
I’ll light a pipe.” He bent over the bowl, 
and above his lighted match squinted at 
the kopje. A stone, a small roundish brown 
boulder on the lip of another one, seemed to 
move very slightly. The short hairs of his. 




54 LAND AND SEA TALES 

neck grated his collar. ‘‘Ell have another 
squint at their retreat/’ he cried to the ser¬ 
geant, astonished at the steadiness of his 
own voice. He swept the plain, and, wheel¬ 
ing, let the glass rest for a moment on the 
kopje’s top. One cranny between the 
rocks was pinkish, where blue sky should 
have shown. His men, dotted down the 
valley, sat heavily on their horses—it never 
occurred to them to dismount. He could 
hear the squeak of the leathers as a man 
shifted. An impatient gust blew through 
the valley and rattled the bushes. On all 
sides the expectant hills stood still under the 
pale blue. 

‘‘And we passed within a quarter of a mile 
of ’em! We’re done!” The thumping 
heart slowed down, and the Captain began 
to think clearly—so clearly that the 
thoughts seemed solid things. “It’s Pre¬ 
toria gaol for us all. Perhaps that man’s 
only a look-out, though. We’ll have to 
bolt! And I led’em into it! . . . You 

fool,” said his other self, above the beat of 
the blood in his eardrums. “If they could 
snipe you all from up there, why haven’t 
they begun already.^ Because you’re the 
bait for the rest of the attack. They don’t 



THE WAY THAT HE TOOK 55 

want you now. You’re to go back and 
bring up the others to be killed. Go back! 
Don’t detach a man or they’ll suspect. 
Go back all together. Tell the sergeant 
you’re going. Some of them up there will 
understand English. Tell it aloud! Then 
back you go with the news—the real news.” 

‘‘The country’s all clear, sergeant,” he 
shouted. “We’ll go back and tell the 
Colonel.” With an idiotic giggle he added, 
“ It’s a good road for guns, don’t you think 

“Hear you that.?” said Jan van Staden, 
gripping a burgher’s arm. “God is on our 
side to-day. They will bring their little 
cannons after all!” 

“Go easy. No good bucketing the 
horses to pieces. We’ll need ’em for the 
pursuit later,” said the Captain. “Hullo, 
there’s a vulture! How far would you make 
him.?” 

“Can’t tell, sir, in this dry air.” 

The bird swooped towards the second 
flat-topped kopje, but suddenly shivered 
sideways, and wheeled off again, followed 
intently by the Captain’s glance. 

“And that kopje’s simply full of’em, too,” 
he said, flushing. “ Perfectly confident they 
are, that we’d take this road—and then 




56 LAND AND SEA TALES 

they’ll scupper the whole boiling of us! 
They’ll let us through to fetch up the others. 
But I mustn’t let ’em know we know. By 
Jove, they do not think much of us! ’Don’t 
blame ’em.” 

The cunning of the trap did not impress 
him until later. 

Down the track jolted a dozen well- 
equipped men, laughing and talking—a 
mark to make a pious burgher’s mouth 
water. Thrice had their Captain explicitly 
said that they were to march easy, so a 
trooper began to hum a tune that he had 
picked up in Capetown streets:— 

Vat jou goet en trek, Ferriera, 

Vat jou goet en trek; 

Jannie met de hoepel bein, Ferriera, 

Jannie met de hoepel bein! 

Then with a whistle:— 

Zwaar draa—alle en de ein kant— 

The Captain, thinking furiously, found his 
mind turn to a camp in the Karroo, months 
before; an engine that had halted in that 
waste, and a woman with brown hair, early 
grizzled—an extraordinary woman. . . . 

Yes, but as soon as they had dropped the 





THE WAY THAT HE TOOK 57 

flat-topped kopje behind its neighbour he 
must hurry back and report ... A 
woman with grey eyes and black eyelashes 
. . . The Boers would probably be 

massed on those two kopjes. How soon 
dare he break into a canter.? ... A 
woman with a queer cadence in her speech. 

. . . It was not more than five miles 

home by the straight road— 

Even when we were children we learned 
not to go hack by the way we had come” 

The sentence came back to him, self- 
shouted, so clearly that he almost turned to 
see if the scouts had heard. The two flat- 
topped kopjes behind him were covered by 
a long ridge. The camp lay due south. 
He had only to follow the road to the Nek— 
a notch, unscouted as he recalled now, be¬ 
tween the two hills. 

He wheeled his men up a long valley. 

“ Excuse me, sir, that ain’t our road!” said 
the sergeant. “Once we get over this rise, 
straight on, we come into direct touch with 
the ’elio, on that flat bit o’ road there they 
^elioed us goin’ out.” 

“ But we aren’t going to get in touch with 
them just now. Come along, and come 
quick.” 




S8 LAND AND SEA TALES 

‘‘What’s the meaning of this?” said a 
private in the rear. “What’s ’e doin’ this 
detour for? We sha’n’t get in for hours an’ 
hours.” 

“Come on, men. Flog a canter out of 
your brutes, somehow,” the Captain called 
back. 

For two throat-parched hours he held west 
by south, away from the Nek, puzzling over 
a compass already demented by the iron¬ 
stone in the hills, and then turned southeast 
through an eruption of low hills that ran 
far into the re-entering bend of the river 
that circled the left bank of the camp. 

Eight miles to eastward that student from 
Stellenbosch had wriggled out on the rocks 
above the Nek to have a word with Vrooman 
of Emmaus. The bottom seemed to have 
dropped out of at least one portion of their 
programme; for the scouting party were not 
to be seen. 

“Jan is a clever man,” he said to his com¬ 
panion, “but he does not think that even 
rooineks may learn. Perhaps those scouts 
will have seen Jan’s commando, and per¬ 
haps they will come back to warn the 
rooineks. That is why I think he should 
have shot them before they came to the Nek, 


THE WAY THAT HE TOOK 59 

and made quite sure that only one or two got 
away. It would have made the English 
angry, and they would have come out across 
the open in hundreds to be shot. Then 
when we ran away they would have come 
after us without thinking. If you can make 
the English hurry, they never think. Jan 
is wrong this time.” 

‘‘ Lie down, and pray you have not shown 
yourself to their helio-station,” growled 
Vrooman of Emmaus. “You throw with 
your arms and kick with your legs like a 
rooinek. When we get back I will tell Jan 
and he will sjambok you. All will yet come 
right. They will go and warn the rest, and 
the rest will hurry out by this very nek. 
Then we can shoot. Now you lie still and 
wait. 

“’Ere’s a rummy picnic. We left camp, 
as it were, by the front door. ’E ^as given 
us a giddy-go-round, an’ no mistake,” said 
a dripping private as he dismounted behind 
the infantry lines. 

“Did you see our helio?” This was the 
Colonel, hot from racing down from the 
helio-station. “There were a lot of Boers 
waiting for you on the Nek. We saw ’em. 
We tried to get at you with the helio, and 


LAND AND SEA TALES 


^^60 

tell you we were coming out to help you. 
Then we saw you didn’t come over that flat 
bit of road where we had signalled you going 
out, and we wondered why. We didn’t hear 
any shots.” 

“I turned off, sir, and came in by another 
road,” said the Captain. 

‘^By another road!” The Colonel lifted 
his eyebrows. ‘‘Perhaps you’re not aware, 
sir, that the Boers have been in full retreat 
for the last three hours, and that those men 
on the Nek were simply a rear-guard put out 
to delay us for a little. We could see that 
much from here. Your duty, sir, was to 
have taken them in the rear, and then we 
could have brushed them aside. The Boer 
retreat has been going on all morning, sir— 
all morning. You were despatched to see 
the front clear and to return at once. The 
whole camp has been under arms for three 
hours; and instead of doing your work you 
wander all about Africa with your scouts to 
avoid a handful of skulking Boers! You 
should have sent a man back at once—you 
should have-” 

The Captain got off his horse stiffly. 

“As a matter of fact,” said he, “I didn’t 
know for sure that there were any Boers on 




THE WAY THAT HE TOOK 6i 


the Nek, but I went round it in ca^se it was so. 
But I do know that the kopjes beyond the 
Nek are simply crawling with Boers.’’ 

“Nonsense. We can see the whole lot of 
’em retreating out yonder.” 

“Of course you can. That’s part of their 
game, sir. I saw ’em lying on the top of 
a couple of kopjes commanding the road, 
where it goes into the plain on the far side. 
They let us come in to see, and they let us 
go out to report the country clear and bring 
you up. Now they are waiting for you. 
The whole thing is a trap.” 

“D’you expect any officer of my experi¬ 
ence to believe that.^” 

“As you please, sir,” said the Captain 
hopelessly. “My responsibility ends with 
my report.” 


AN UNQUALIFIED PILOT 





':,4 

’' ')>y ■'/- 'i‘ 




’^» t r' '4.'’ ^' 


» 



no 









# 


} 


^ ■ * 



AN UNQUALIFIED PILOT 


This tale is founded on something that happened a 
good many years ago in the Port of Calcutta^ before 
wireless telegraphy was used on shipSy and men and 
boys were less easy to catch when once they were in a 
ship. It is not meant to show that anybody who thinks 
he would like to become eminent in his business can do 
so at a moment^s notice; but it proves the old saying 
that if you want anything badly enough and are willing 
to pay the price for it, you generally get it. If you 
dont get what you want it is a sign either that you did 
not seriously want it, or that you tried to bargain over 
the price. 

A lmost any pilot win tell you that his 
. work is much more difficult than you 
imagine; but the Pilots of the Hugh know 
that they have one hundred miles of the 
most dangerous river on earth running 
through their hands—the Hugh between 
Calcutta and the Bay of Bengal—and they 
say nothing. Their service is picked and 
sifted as carefully as the bench of the Su¬ 
preme Court, for a judge can only hang the 
wrong man, or pass a bad law; but a care¬ 
less pilot can lose a ten-thousand-ton ship 




66 


LAND AND SEA TALES 


with crew and cargo in less time than it 
takes to reverse her engines. 

There is very little chance of anything 
getting off again when once she touches in 
the furious Hugh current, loaded with all 
the fat silt of the fields of Bengal, where the 
soundings change two feet between tides, 
and new channels make and unmake them¬ 
selves in one rainy season. Men have 
fought the Hugh for two hundred years, 
till now the river owns a huge building, 
with drawing, survey, and telegraph de¬ 
partments, devoted to its private service, as 
well as a body of wardens, who are called 
the Port Commissioners. 

They and their officers govern everything 
that floats from the Hugli Bridge to the last 
buoy at Pilots Ridge, one hundred and forty 
miles away, far out in the Bay of Bengal, 
where the steamers first pick up the pilots 
from the pilot brig. 

A Hugli pilot does not kindly bring papers 
aboard for the passengers, or scramble up 
the ship’s side by wet, swaying rope-ladders. 
He arrives in his best clothes, with a native 
servant or an assistant pilot to wait on him, 
and he behaves as a man should who can 
earn two or three thousand pounds a year 


AN UNQUALIFIED PILOT 67 

after twenty years’ apprenticeship. He has 
beautiful rooms in the Port Office at Cal¬ 
cutta, and generally keeps himself to the 
society of his own profession, for though the 
telegraph reports the more important sound¬ 
ings of the river daily, there is much to be 
learned from brother pilots between each 
trip. 

Some million tons of shipping must find 
their way to and from Calcutta each twelve- 
month, and unless the Hugh were watched 
as closely as his keeper watches an elephant, 
there is a fear that it might silt up, as it 
has silted up round the old Dutch and 
Portuguese ports twenty and thirty miles 
behind Calcutta. 

So the Port Office sounds and scours and 
dredges the river, and builds spurs and 
devices for coaxing currents, and labels all 
the buoys with their proper letters, and at¬ 
tends to the semaphores and the lights and 
the drum, ball and cone storm signals; and 
the pilots of the Hugh do the rest; but, in 
spite of all care and the very best attention, 
the Hugh swallows her ship or two every 
year. Even the coming of wireless teleg¬ 
raphy does not spoil her appetite. 

When Martin Trevor had waited on the 


68 


LAND AND SEA TALES 


river from his boyhood; when he had risen 
to be a Senior Pilot entitled to bring up to 
Calcutta the very biggest ships; when he had 
thought and talked of nothing but Hugh 
pilotage all his life to nobody except Hugh 
pilots, he was exceedingly surprised and 
indignant that his only son should decide 
to follow his father’s profession. Mrs. 
Trevor had died when the boy was a child, 
and as he grew older, Trevor, in the inter¬ 
vals of his business, noticed that the lad 
was very often by the river-side—no place, 
he said, for a nice boy. But, as he was not 
often at home, and as the aunt who looked 
after Jim naturally could not follow him to 
his chosen haunts, and as Jim had not the 
faintest intention of giving up old friends 
there, nothing but ineffectual growls came 
of the remark. Later, when Trevor once 
asked him if he could make anything out 
of the shipping on the water, Jim replied by 
reeling off the list of all the house-flags in 
sight at the moorings, together with supple¬ 
mentary information about their tonnage 
and captains. 

‘‘You’ll come to a bad end, Jim,” said 
Trevor. “Boys of your age haven’t any 
business to waste their time on these things.” 



AN UNQUALIFIED PILOT 69 

‘‘Oh, Pedro at the Sailors’ Home says you 
can’t begin too early.” 

“At what, please.^” 

“Piloting. I’m nearly fourteen now, and 
—and I know where most of the shipping 
in the river is, and I know what there was 
yesterday over the Mayapur Bar, and I’ve 
been down to Diamond Harbour—oh, a 
hundred times already, and I’ve-” 

“You’ll go to school, son, and learn what 
they teach you, and you’ll turn out some¬ 
thing better than a pilot,” said his father, 
who wanted Jim to enter the Subordinate 
Civil Service, but he might just as well have 
told a shovel-nosed porpoise of the river to 
come ashore and begin life as a hen. Jim 
held his tongue; he noticed that all the best 
pilots in the Port Office did that; and de¬ 
voted his young attention and all his spare 
time to the river he loved. He had seen 
the nice young gentlemen in the Subordi¬ 
nate Civil Service, and he called them a rude 
native name for “clerks.” 

He became as well known as the Banks- 
hall itself; and the Port Police let him 
inspect their launches, and the tug-boat 
captains had always a place for him at their 
tables, and the mates of the big steam 




70 


LAND AND SEA TALES 


dredgers used to show him how the machin¬ 
ery worked, and there were certain native 
row-boats which Jim practically owned; and 
he extended his patronage to the railway 
that runs to Diamond Harbour, forty miles 
down the river. In the old days nearly all 
the East India Company’s ships used to 
discharge at Diamond Harbour, on account 
of the shoals above, but now ships go straight 
up to Calcutta, and they have only some 
moorings for vessels in distress there, and a 
telegraph service, and a harbour-master, who 
was one of Jim’s most intimate friends. 

He would sit in the Office listening to 
the soundings of the shoals as they were 
reported every day, and attending to the 
movements of the steamers up and down 
(Jim always felt he had lost something ir¬ 
retrievable if a boat got in or out of the 
river without his knowing of it), and when 
the big liners with their rows of blazing 
portholes tied up in Diamond Harbour for 
the night, Jim would row from one ship to 
the other through the sticky hot air and the 
buzzing mosquitoes and listen respectfully 
as the pilots conferred together about the 
habits of steamers. 

Once, for a treat, his father took him down 


AN UNQUALIFIED PILOT 71 

clear out to the Sandheads and the pilot brig 
there, and Jim was happily sea-sick as she 
tossed and pitched in the Bay. The cream 
of life, though, was coming up in a tug or a 
police boat from Diamond Harbour to Cal¬ 
cutta, over the “James and Mary,” those 
terrible sands christened after a royal ship 
that they sunk two hundred years before. 
They are made by two rivers that enter the 
Hugh six miles apart and throw their own 
silt across the silt of the main stream, so 
that with each turn of weather and tide 
the sands shift and change under water like 
clouds in the sky. It was here (the tales 
sound much worse when they are told in 
the rush and growl of the muddy waters) 
that the Countess of Stirling, fifteen hundred 
tons, touched and capsized in ten minutes, 
and a two-thousand-ton steamer in two, 
and a pilgrim ship in five, and another 
steamer literally in one instant, holding 
down her men with the masts and shrouds 
as she lashed over. When a ship touches on 
the “James and Mary,” the river knocks 
her down and buries her, and the sands 
quiver all around her and reach out under 
water and take new shapes over the corpse. 

Young Jim would lie up in the bows of the 


72 


LAND AND SEA TALES 


tug and watch the straining buoys kick and 
choke in the coffee-coloured current, while 
the semaphores and flags signalled from the 
bank how much water there was in the 
channel, till he learned that men who deal 
with men can afford to be careless, on the 
chance of their fellows being like them; but 
men who deal with things dare not relax for 
an instant. ‘‘And that’s the very reason,” 
old McEwan said to him once, “that the 
‘James and Mary’ is the safest part of the 
river,” and he shoved the big black Ban- 
doorah, that draws twenty-five feet, through 
the Eastern Gat, with a turban of white 
foam wrapped round her forefoot and 
her screw beating as steadily as his own 
heart. 

If Jim could not get away to the river 
there was always the big, cool Port Office, 
where the soundings were worked out and 
the maps drawn; or the Pilots’ room, where 
he could lie in a long chair and listen quietly 
to the talk about the Hugh; and there was 
the library, where if you had money you 
could buy charts and books of directions 
against the time that you would actually 
have to steam over the places themselves. 
It was exceedingly hard for Jim to hold the 


AN UNQUALIFIED PILOT 73 

list of Jewish Kings in his head, and he was 
more than uncertain as to the end of the 
verb audio if you followed it far enough down 
the page, but he could keep the soundings 
of three channels distinct in his head, and, 
what is more confusing, the changes in the 
buoys from ‘‘Garden Reach’' down to 
Saugor, as well as the greater part of the 
Calcutta Telegraphy the only paper he ever 
read. 

Unluckily, you cannot peruse about the 
Hugh without money, even though you are 
the son of the best-known pilot on the river, 
and as soon as Trevor understood how his 
son was spending his time, he cut down his 
pocket money, of which Jim had a very 
generous allowance. In his extremity he 
took counsel with Pedro, the plum-coloured 
mulatto at the Sailors’ Home, and Pedro was 
a bad, designing man. He introduced Jim 
to a Chinaman in Muchuatollah, an un¬ 
pleasing place in itself, and the Chinaman, 
who answered to the name of Erh-Tze, when 
he was not smoking opium, talked business 
in pigeon-English to Jim for an hour. Every 
bit of that business from first to last was 
flying in the face of every law on the river, 
but it interested Jim. 


74 


LAND AND SEA TALES 


‘‘S’pose you takee. Can do?” Erh-Tze 
said at last. 

Jim considered his chances. A junk, he 
knew, would draw about eleven feet and the 
regular fee for a qualified pilot, outward 
to the Sandheads, would be two hundred 
rupees. On the one hand he was not quali¬ 
fied, so he dared not ask more than half. 
But, on the other hand, he was fully certain 
of the thrashing of his life from his father 
for piloting without license, let alone what 
the Port Authorities might do to him. So 
he asked one hundred and seventy-five 
rupees, and Erh-Tze beat him down to a 
hundred and twenty. The cargo of his 
junk was worth anything from seventy to 
a hundred and fifty thousand rupees, some 
of which he was getting as enormous freight 
on the coffins of thirty or forty dead China¬ 
men, whom he was taking to be buried in 
their native country. 

Rich Chinamen will pay fancy prices for 
this service, and they have a superstition 
that the iron of steamships is bad for the 
spiritual health of their dead. Erh-Tze’s 
junk had crept up from Singapore, via 
Penang and Rangoon, to Calcutta, where 
Erh-Tze had been staggered by the Pilot 


AN UNQUALIFIED PILOT 75 

dues. This time he was going out at a 
reduction with Jim, who, as Pedro kept 
telling him, was just as good as a pilot, and 
a heap cheaper. 

Jim knew something of the manners of 
junks, but he was not prepared, when he 
went down that night with his charts, for 
the confusion of cargo and coolies and coffins 
and clay-cooking places, and other things 
that littered her decks. He had sense 
enough to haul the rudder up a few feet, 
for he knew that a junk’s rudder goes far 
below the bottom, and he allowed a foot 
extra to Erh-Tze’s estimate of the junk’s 
depth. Then they staggered out into mid¬ 
stream very early, and never had the city 
of his birth looked so beautiful as when he 
feared he would not come back to see it. 
Going down ‘‘Garden Reach” he discovered 
that the junk would answer to her helm if 
you put it over far enough, and that she had 
a fair, though Chinese, notion of sailing. 
He took charge of the tiller by stationing 
three Chinese on each side of it, and stand¬ 
ing a little forward, gathered their pigtails 
into his hands, three right and three left, 
as though they had been the yoke lines of a 
row-boat. Erh-Tze almost smiled at this; 


76 LAND AND SEA TALES 

he felt he was getting good care for his money 
and took a neat little polished bamboo to 
keep the men attentive, for he said this was 
no time to teach the crew pigeon-English. 
The more way they could get on the junk 
the better would she steer, and as soon as 
he felt a little confidence in her, Jim ordered 
the stiff, rustling sails to be hauled up 
tighter and tighter. He did not know their 
names—at least any name that would be 
likely to interest a Chinaman—but Erh-Tze 
had not banged about the waters of the 
Malay Archipelago all his life for nothing. 
He rolled forward with his bamboo, and the 
things rose like Eastern incantations. 

Early as they were on the river, a big 
American oil (but they called it kerosene in 
those days) ship was ahead of them in tow, 
and when Jim saw her through the lifted 
mist he was thankful. She would draw all 
of seventeen feet, and if he could steer by 
her they would be safe. It is easier to 
scurry up and down the “James and Mary” 
in a police-boat that someone else is han¬ 
dling than to cram a hardmouthed old junk 
across the same sands alone, with the cer¬ 
tainty of a thrashing if you come out alive. 

Jim glued his eyes to the American, and 



AN UNQUALIFIED PILOT 77 

saw that at Fultah she dropped her tug and 
stood down the river under sail. He all but 
whooped aloud, for he knew that the number 
of pilots who preferred to work a ship 
through the “James and Mary” was strictly 
limited. “If it isn’t Father, it’s Dearsley,” 
said Jim, “and Dearsley went down yester¬ 
day with the BancoorUy so it’s Father. If I’d 
gone home last night instead of going to 
Pedro, I’d have met him. He must have 
got his ship quick, but—Father is a very 
quick man.” Then Jim reflected that they 
kept a piece of knotted rope on the pilot 
brig that stung like a wasp; but this thought 
he dismissed as beneath the dignity of an 
officiating pilot, who needed only to nod his 
head to set Erh-Tze’s bamboo to work. 

As the American came round, just before 
the Fultah Sands, Jim raked her with 
his spy-glass, and saw his father on the 
poop, an unlighted cigar between his teeth. 
That cigar, Jim knew, would be smoked on 
the other side of the “James and Mary,” 
and Jim felt so entirely safe and happy that 
he lit a cigar on his own account. This 
kind of piloting was child’s play. His 
father could not make a mistake if he tried; 
and Jim, with his six obedient pigtails in 


78 LAND AND SEA TALES 

his two hands, had leisure to admire the 
perfect style in which the American was 
handled—how she would point her bowsprit 
jeeringly at a hidden bank, as much as to 
say, “Not to-day, thank you, dear,’’ and 
bow down lovingly to a buoy as much as to 
say, You It a gentleman, at any rate,” 
and come round sharp on her heel with a 
flutter and a rustle, and a slow, steady swing 
something like a well-dressed woman staring 
all round the theatre through opera-glasses. 

It was hard work to keep the junk near 
her, though Erh-Tze set everything that 
was by any means settable, and used his 
bamboo most generously. When they were 
nearly under her counter, and a little to 
her left, Jim, hidden behind a sail, would feel 
warm and happy all over, thinking of the 
thousand nautical and piloting things that 
he knew. When they fell more than half 
a mile behind, he was cold and miserable 
thinking of all the million things he did'not 
know or was not quite sure of. And so 
they went down, Jim steering by his father, 
turn for turn, over the Mayapur Bar, with 
the semaphores on each bank duly signalling 
the depth of water, through the Western 
Gat, and round Makoaputti Lumps, and in 



AN UNQUALIFIED PILOT 79 

and out of twenty places, each more exciting 
than the last, and Jim nearly pulled the six 
pigtails out for pure joy when the last of the 
^‘James and Mary” had gone astern, and 
they were walking through Diamond Har¬ 
bour. 

From there to the mouth of the Hugh 
things are not so bad—at least, that was 
what Jim thought, and held on till the swell 
from the Bay of Bengal made the old junk 
heave and snort, and the river broadened 
into the inland sea, with islands only a foot 
or two high scattered about it. The Amer¬ 
ican walked away from the junk as soon as 
they were beyond Kedgeree, and the night 
came on and the river looked very big and 
desolate, so Jim promptly anchored some¬ 
where in grey water, with the Saugor Light 
away off toward the east. He had a great 
respect for the Hugh to the last yard of her, 
and had no desire whatever to find himself 
on the Gasper Sand or any other little shoal. 
Erh-Tze and the crew highly approved of 
this piece of seamanship. They set no 
watch, lit no lights, and at once went to 
sleep. 

Jim lay down between a red-and-black 
lacquer coffin and a little live pig in a basket. 


8 o 


LAND AND SEA TALES 


As soon as it was light he began studying his 
chart of the Hugh mouth, and trying to 
find out where in the river he might be. 
He decided to be on the safe side and wait 
for another sailing-ship and follow her out. 
So he made an enormous breakfast of rice 
and boiled fish, while Erh-Tze lit fire¬ 
crackers and burned gilt paper to the Joss 
who had saved them so far. Then they 
heaved up their rough-and-tumble anchor, 
and made after a big, fat, iron four-masted 
sailing-ship, heavy as a hay-wain. 

The junk, which was really a very 
Weatherly boat, and might have begun life as 
a private pirate in Annam forty years before, 
followed under easy sail; for the four-master 
would run no risks. She was in old Mc- 
Ewan’s hands, and she waddled about like 
a broody hen, giving each shoal wide allow¬ 
ances. All this happened near the outer 
Floating Light, some hundred and twenty 
miles from Calcutta, and apparently in the 
open sea. 

Jim knew old McEwan’s appetite, and 
often heard him pride himself on getting his 
ship to the pilot brig close upon meal hours, 
so he argued that if the pilot brig was get- 
at-able (and Jim himself had not the ghost 


AN UNQUALIFIED PILOT 8i 

of a notion where she would lie), McEwan 
would find her before one o’clock. 

It was a blazing hot day, and McEwan 
fidgeted the four-master down to "‘Pilots 
Ridge” with what little wind remained, and 
sure enough there lay the pilot brig, and 
Jim felt shivers up his back as Erh-Tze paid 
him his hundred and twenty rupees and he 
went overside in the junk’s one crazy dinghy. 
McEwan was leaving the four-master in a 
long, slashing whale-boat that looked very 
spruce and pretty,- and Jim could see that 
there was a certain amount of excitement 
among the pilots on the brig. There was 
his father too. The ragged Chinese boat¬ 
men gave way in a most ragged fashion, and 
Jim felt very unwashen and disreputable 
when he heard the click of McEwan’s oars 
alongside, and McEwan saying, “James 
Trevor, Ell trouble you to lay alongside 

yy 

me. 

Jim obeyed, and from the corner of one eye 
watched McEwan’s angry whiskers stand up 
all round his face, which turned purple. 

“An’ how is it you break the regulations 
o’ the Porrt o’ Calcutta.^ Are ye aware o’ 
the penalties and impreesonments ye’ve laid 
yourself open to?” McEwan began. 


82 


LAND AND SEA TALES 


Jim said nothing. There was not very 
much to say just then; and McEwan roared 
aloud: ‘‘Man, yeVe perrsonated a Hugh 
pilot, an’ that ’s as much as to say ye’ve 
perrsonated ME! What did yon heathen 
give ye for honorarium?” 

“’Hundred and twenty,” said Jim. 

“‘An’ by what manner o’ means did ye 
get through the ‘James and Mary’?” 

“Father,” was the answer. “He went 
down the same tide and I—we—steered by 
him.” 

McEwan whistled and choked, perhaps 
it was with anger. “Ye’ve made a stalkin’- 
horse o’ your father, then? Jim, laddie^ 
he’ll make an example o’ you.” 

The boat hooked on to the brig’s chains, 
and McEwan said, as he set foot on deck 
before Jim could speak, “Yon’s an enter¬ 
prising cub o’ yours, Trevor. Ye’d better 
enter him in the regular business, or one o’ 
these fine days he’ll be acting as pilot before 
he’s qualified, and sinkin’ junks in the Fair¬ 
way. He fetched yon junk down last night. 
If ye’ve no other designs I’m thinkin’ I’ll 
take him as my cub, for there’s no denying 
he’s a resourceful lad—for all he’s an un¬ 
licked whelp.” 



AN UNQUALIFIED PILOT 83 

‘^That/’ said Trevor, reaching for Jim’s 
left ear, “is something we can remedy,” and 
he led him below. 

The little knotted rope that they keep for 
general purposes on the pilot-brig did its 
duty, but when it was all over Jim was 
unlicked no longer. He was McEwan’s 
property to be registered under the laws 
of the Port of Calcutta, and a week later, 
when the Ellora came along, he bundled over 
the pilot brig’s side with McEwan’s enam¬ 
elled leather hand-bag and a roll of charts 
and a little bag of his own, and he dropped 
into the sternsheets of the pilot gig with 
a very creditable imitation of McEwan’s 
slow, swaying sit-down and hump of the 
shoulders. 


THE JUNK AND DHOW 


O NCE a pair of savages found a stranded 

tree. 

{One-piecee stick-pidgin — two-piecee man. 
Straddle-um — paddle-um — push-um off to sea. 

That way Foleign Devil-boat began.^) 

But before and before, and ever so long 
before 

Any shape of sailing-craft was known, 
The Junk and Dhow had a stern and a bow. 
And a mast and a sail of their own—alone, 
alone! 

As they crashed across the Oceans on their 
own! 


Once there was a pirate-ship, being blown 
ashore— 

{Plitty soon pilum up^ sfosee no can tack. 
Seven-piecee stlong man pullum staFoa d oar. 
That way bling her head alound and sailo 
back.) 

^Remember, the Chinaman generally says “1” for “r.” 

84 







THE JUNK AND DHOW 85 

But before, and before, and ever so long 
before 

Grand Commander Noah took the wheel. 
The Junk and the Dhow, though they look 
like anyhow. 

Had rudders reaching deep below their 
keel—akeel—akeel! 

As they laid the Eastern Seas beneath 
their keel! 


Once there was a galliot yawing in a 
tide. 

{Too much foolee side-slip. How can 
stop ? 

Man catchee tea-box lid—lasha longaside. 

That way make her plenty glip and sail 
first-chop.) 

But before, and before, and ever so long 
before 

Any such contrivances were used. 

The whole Confucian sea-board had stan¬ 
dardized the lee-board. 

And hauled it up or dropped it as they 
choosed—or chose—or choosed! 

According to the weather, when they 
cruised! 






86 LAND AND SEA TALES 

Once there was a caravel in beam-sea 
roll— 

{Cargo shiftee—alia dliftee—no can livee 
long, 

S^posuni nailo boa’d acloss—makee ploper 
hoV? 

That way, cargo sittum still, an ship mo^ 
stlong.) 

But before, and before, and ever so long 
before 

Any square-rigged vessel hove in sight 

The Canton deep-sea craft carried bulk¬ 
heads fore and aft. 

And took good care to keep ’em water¬ 
tight—atite—atite! 

From Amboyna to the Great Australian 
Bight! 


Once there was a sailor-man singing just this 
way— 

{Too muchee yowUo, sickum best fiend! 

Singee all-same pullee lope—haul and belay. 

Hully up and coilum down an—bite ojff 
end I) 

But before, and before, and ever so long 
before 

Any sort of chanty crossed our lips. 








THE JUNK AND DHOW 87 

The Junk and the Dhow, though they look 
like anyhow, 

Were the Mother and the Father of all 
Ships—ahoy!—aships! 

And of half the new inventions in our 
Ships! 

From Tarifa to Formosa of our Ships! 
From Socotra to SeD?z^hor of the 
windlass and the anchor. 

And the Navigators’ Compass on our 
Ships—ahoy!—our Ships 
(0, hully up and coilum down and bite off end!) 





I 




I 


0 


r 

I; 

i 




HIS GIFT 








«I 


0 




^ ■, '■ 



HIS GIFT 


H IS Scoutmaster and his comrades, who 
disagreed on several points, were 
united in one conviction—that William 
Glasse Sawyer was, without exception, the 
most unprofitable person, not merely in the 
Pelican Troop, who lived in the wilderness 
of the 47th Postal District, London S. E., 
but in the whole body of Boy Scouts 
throughout the world. 

No one, except a ferocious uncle who was 
also a French-polisher, seemed responsible 
for his beginnings. There was a legend that 
he had been entered as a Wolf-Cub at the age 
of eight, under Miss Doughty, whom the 
uncle had either bribed or terrorized to 
accept him; and that after six months Miss 
Doughty confessed that she could make 
nothing of him and retired to teach school 
in the Yorkshire moors. There is also a 
red-headed ex-cub of that troop (he is now in 
a shipping-office) who asserts proudly that 
he used to bite William Glasse Sawyer on 


91 



92 


LAND AND SEA TALES 


the leg in the hope of waking him up, and 
takes most of the credit for William’s pres¬ 
ent success. But when William moved into 
the larger life of the Pelicans, who were gay 
birds, he was not what you might call alert. 
In shape he resembled the ace of diamonds; 
in colour he was an oily sallow. 

He could accomplish nothing that re¬ 
quired one glimmer of reason, thought or 
commonsense. He cleaned himself only 
under bitter compulsion; he lost his bear¬ 
ings equally in town or country after a five- 
minutes’ stroll. He could track nothing 
smaller than a tram-car on a single line, and 
that only if there were no traffic. He could 
neither hammer a nail, carry an order, tie 
a knot, light a fire, notice any natural 
object, except food, or use any edged tool 

LA. 1 

except a table knife. To crown all, his 
innumerable errors and omissions were not 
even funny. 

But it is an old law of human nature that 
if you hold to one known course of conduct 
—good or evil—you end by becoming an 
institution; and when he was fifteen or 
thereabouts William achieved that position. 
The Pelicans gradually took pride in the 
notorious fact that they possessed the only 




HIS GIFT 


93 


Sealed Pattern, Mark A, Ass—an unique 
jewel, so to speak, of Absolute, Unalterable 
Incapacity. The poet of a neighbouring 
troop used to write verses about him, and 
recite them from public places, such as the 
tops of passing trams. William made no 
comment, but wrapped himself up in long 
silences that he seldom broke till the juniors 
of the Troop (the elders had given it up long 
before) tried to do him good turns with their 
scout-staves. 

In private life he assisted his uncle at the 
mystery of French-polishing, which, he said, 
was “boiling up things in pots and rubbing 
down bits of wood.’’ The boiling-up, he 
said, he did not mind so much. The rub¬ 
bing down he hated. Once, too, he volun¬ 
teered that his uncle and only relative had 
been in the Navy, and “did not like to be 
played with”; and the vision of William 
playing with any human being upset even 
his Scoutmaster. 

Now it happened, upon a certain summer 
that was really a summer with heat to it, the 
Pelicans had been lent a dream of a summer 
camp in a dream of a park, which offered 
opportunities for every form of diversion, 
including bridging muddy-banked streams. 



94 


LAND AND SEA TALES 


and unlimited cutting into young alders 
and undergrowth at large. A convenient 
village lay just outside the Park wall, and 
the ferny slopes round the camp were rich 
in rabbits, not to mention hedgehogs and 
other fascinating vermin. It was reached 
—Mr. Hale their Scoutmaster saw to that— 
after two days’ hard labour, with the Troop 
push-cart, along sunny roads. 

William’s share in the affair was—what it 
had always been. First he lost most of his 
kit; next his uncle talked to him after the 
fashion of the Navy of ’96 before refitting 
him; thirdly he went lame behind the push¬ 
cart by reason of a stone in his shoe, and on 
arrival in camp dropped—not for the first, 
second or third time—into his unhonoured 
office as Camp Orderly, and was placed at 
the disposal of The Prawn, whose light blue 
eyes stuck out from his freckled face, and 
whose long narrow chest was covered with 
badges. From that point on, the procedure 
was as usual. Once again did The Prawn 
assure his Scoutmaster that he would take 
enormous care of William and give him work 
suited to his capacity and intelligence. Once 
again did William grunt and wriggle at the 
news, and once again in the silence of the 





HIS GIFT 


95 


deserted camp next morning, while the rest 
of the Pelicans were joyously mucking them¬ 
selves up to their young bills at bridging 
brooks, did he bow his neck to The Prawn’s 
many orders. For The Prawn was a born 
organizer. He set William to unpack the 
push-cart and then to neatly and exactly 
replace all parcels, bags, tins, and boxes. 
He despatched him thrice in the forenoon 
across the hot Park to fetch water from a 
distant well equipped with a stiff-necked 
windlass and a split handle that pinched 
William’s fat palms. He bade him collect 
sticks, thorny for choice, out of the flanks of 
a hedge full of ripe nettles against which 
Scout uniforms offer small protection. 
He then made him lay them in the camp 
cooking-place, carefully rejecting the green 
ones, for most sticks were alike to William; 
and when everything else failed, he set him 
to pick up stray papers and rubbish the 
length and breadth of the camp. All that 
while, he not only chased him with comments 
but expected that William would show 
gratitude to him for forming his young 
mind. 

‘^’Tisn’t everyone ’ud take this amount 
o’ trouble with you. Mug,” said The Prawn 


96 LAND AND SEA TALES 

virtuously, when even his energetic soul 
could make no further work for his vassal. 
‘‘Now you open that bully-beef tin and 
we’ll have something to eat, and then you’re 
off duty—for a bit. I shall try my hand at 
a little camp-cooking.” 

William found the tin—at the very bot¬ 
tom, of course, of the push-cart; cut himself 
generously over the knuckles in opening it 
(till The Prawn showed him how this should 
be done), and in due course, being full of 
bread and bully, withdrew towards a grate¬ 
ful clump of high fern that he had had his 
eye on for some time, wriggled deep into it, 
and on a little rabbit-browsed clearing of 
turf, stretched out and slept the sleep of 
the weary who have been up and under strict 
orders since six a.m. Till that hour of that 
day, be it remembered, William had given 
no proof either of intelligence or initiative 
in any direction. 

He waked, slowly as was his habit, and 
noticed that the shadows were stretching a 
little, even as he stretched himself. Then 
he heard The Prawn clanking pot-lids, be¬ 
tween soft bursts of song. William sniffed. 
The Prawn was cooking—^was probably 
qualifying for something or other; The 



HIS GIFT 


97 


Prawn did nothing but qualify for badges. 
On reflection William discovered that he 
loved The Prawn even less this camp than 
the last, or the one before that. Then he 
heard the voice of a stranger. 

‘‘Yes,” was The Prawn’s reply. “I’m in 
charge of the camp. Would you like to look 
at it, sir?” 

“Seen ’em—seen heaps of ’em,” said the 
unknown. “My son was in ’em once— 
Buffaloes, out Hendon-way. What are 
you< 

“Well, just now I’m a sort of temporary 
Cook,” said The Prawn, whose manners were 
far better than William’s. 

“Temp’ry! Temp’ry!” the stranger 
puffed. “Can’t be a temp’ry cook any 
more’n you can be a temp’ry Parson. Not 
so much. Cookin’s cookin’. Let’s see your 
notions of cookin’.” 

William had never heard any one address 
The Prawn in these tones, and somehow it 
cheered him. In the silence that followed 
he turned on his face and wriggled unosten¬ 
tatiously through the fern, as a Scout 
should, till he could see that bold man with¬ 
out attracting The Prawn’s notice. And 
this, too, was the first time that William 



98 LAND AND SEA TALES 

had ever profited by the instruction of his 
Scoutmaster or the example of his comrades. 

Heavenly sights rewarded him. The 
Prawn, visibly ill at ease, was shifting from 
one sinewy leg to the other, while an enor¬ 
mously fat little man with a pointed grey 
beard and arms like the fins of a fish investi¬ 
gated a couple of pots that hung on properly 
crutched sticks over the small fire that 
William had lighted in the cooking-place. 
He did not seem to approve of what he saw 
or smelt.- And yet it was the impeccable 
Prawn’s own cookery! 

‘‘Lor!” said he at last after more sniffs 
of contempt, as he replaced the lid. “If 
you hot up things in tins, that ain’t cookery. 
That’s vittles—mere vittles! And the way 
you’ve set that pot on, you’re drawing all 
the nesty wood-smoke into the water. The 
spuds won’t take much harm of it, but 
you’ve ruined the meat. That is meat, 
ain’t it.^ Get me a fork.” 

William hugged himself. The Prawn, 
looking exactly like his namesake well- 
boiled, fetched a big fork. The little man 
prodded into the pot. 

“It’s stew!” The Prawn explained, but 
his voice shook. 


HIS GIFT 


99 


‘‘ Lor!” said the man again. “ It’s boilin’! 
It’s boilin’! You don’t boil when you 
stew, my son; an’ as for this ''—up came a 
grey slab of mutton—“there’s no odds be¬ 
tween this and motor-tyres. Well! Well! 
As I was sayin’-” He joined his hands be¬ 

hind his globular back and shook his head 
in silence. After a while, The Prawn tried 
to assert himself. 

“Cookin’ isn’t my strong point,” began 
The Prawn, “but-” 

“Pore boys! Pore boys!” the stranger 
soliloquized, looking straight in front of 
him. Pore little boys! Wicked, / call it. 
They don’t ever let you make bread, do they, 
my son.^” 

The Prawn said they generally bought 
their bread at a shop. 

“Ah! I’m a shopkeeper meself. Marsh, 
the Baker here, is me. Pore boys! Well! 
Well! . . . Though it’s against me own 

interest to say so, / think shops are wicked. 
They sell people things out o’ tins which 
save ’em trouble, an’ fill the ’ospitals with 
stummick-cases afterwards. An’ the muck 
that’s sold for flour. . . .” His voice 

faded away and he meditated again. “Well 
—well! As I was sayin’- Pore boys! 






loo LAND AND SEA TALES 


Pore boys! Em glad you ain’t askin’ me 
to dinner. Good bye.” 

He rolled away across the fern, leaving The 
Prawn dumb behind him. 

It seemed to William best to wriggle back 
in his cover as far as he could, ere The Prawn 
should call him to work again. He was 
not a Scout by instinct, but his uncle had 
shown him that when things went wrong 
in the world, someone generally passed it 
onto someone else. Very soon he heard 
his name called, acidly, several times. He 
crawled out from the far end of the fern- 
patch, rubbing his eyes, and The Prawn 
re-enslaved him on the spot. For once in 
his life William was alert and intelligent, but 
The Prawn paid him no compliments, nor 
when the very muddy Pelicans came back 
from the bridging did The Prawn refer in any 
way to the visit of Mr. E. M. Marsh & Son, 
Bakers and Confectioners in the village 
street just outside the Park wall. Nor, 
for that matter, did he serve the Pelicans 
much besides tinned meats for their evening 
meal. 

To say that William did not sleep a wink 
that night would be what has been called 
“nature-faking”; which is a sin. His sys- 


HIS GIFT 


lOI 


tern demanded at least nine hours’ rest, but 
he lay awake for quite twenty minutes, dur¬ 
ing which he thought intensely, rapidly and 
joyously. Had he been asked he would 
have said that his thoughts dealt solely 
with The Prawn and the judgment that had 
fallen upon him; but William was no psy¬ 
chologist. He did not know that hate— 
raging hate against a too-badged, too vir¬ 
tuous senior—had shot him into a new 
world, exactly as the large blunt shell is 
heaved through space and dropped into a 
factory, a garden or a barracks by the charge 
behind it. And, as the shell, which is but 
metal and mixed chemicals, needs only a 
graze on the fuse to spread itself all over 
the landscape, so did his mind need but 
the touch of that hate to flare up and il¬ 
luminate not only all his world, but his own 
way through it. 

Next morning something sang in his ear 
that it was long since he had done good 
turns to any one except his uncle, who was 
slow to appreciate them. He would amend 
that error; and the more safely since The 
Prawn would be ofif all that day with the 
Troop on a tramp in the natural history line, 
and his place as Camp Warden and Provost 




102 LAND AND SEA TALES 


Marshal would be filled by the placid and 
easy-going Walrus, whose proper name was 
Carpenter, who never tried for badges, but 
who could not see a rabbit without going 
after him. And the owner of the Park had 
given full leave to the Pelicans to slay by 
any means, except a gun, any rabbits they 
could. So William ingratiated himself with 
his Superior Officer as soon as the Pelicans 
had left. . . . 

No, the excellent Carpenter did not see 
that he needed William by his side all day. 
He might take himself and his bruised foot 
pretty much where he chose. He went, 
and this new and active mind of his that 
he did not realize, accompanied him— 
straight up the path of duty which, poetry 
tells us, is so often the road to glory. 

He began by cleaning himself and his kit 
at seven o’clock in the morning, long before 
the village shops were open. This he did 
near a postern gate with a crack in it, in 
the Park wall, commanding a limited but 
quite sufficient view of the establishment 
of E. M. Marsh & Son across the street. 
It was perfect weather, and about eight 
o’clock Mr. Marsh himself in his shirt¬ 
sleeves rolled out to enjoy it before he took 


HIS GIFT 


103 


down the shutters. Hardly had he shifted 
the first of them when a fattish Boy Scout 
with a flat face and a slight limp laid hold 
of the second and began to slide it towards 
him. 

“Well, well!’' said Mr. Marsh. “Ah! 
Your good turn, eh.?” 

“Yes,” said William briefly. 

“That’s right! Handsomely now, hand¬ 
somely,” for the shutter was jamming in 
its groove. William knew from his uncle 
that “handsomely” meant slowly and with 
care. The shutter responded to the coax¬ 
ing. The others followed. 

“ Belay!” said Mr. Marsh, wiping his fore¬ 
head, for, like William, he perspired easily. 
When he turned round William had gone. 
The Movies had taught him, though he 
knew it not, the value of dramatic effect. 
He continued to watch Mr. Marsh through 
the crack in the postern—it was the little 
wooden door at the end of the right of way 
through the Park—and when, an hour or so 
later, Mr. Marsh came out of his shop and 
headed towards it, William retired back¬ 
wards into the high fern and brambles. 
The manoeuvre would have rejoiced Mr. 
Hale’s heart, for generally William moved 



104 land and sea tales 

like an elephant with its young. He turned 
up, quite casually, when Mr. Marsh had 
puffed his way again into the empty camp. 
Carpenter was off in pursuit of rabbits, with 
a pocket full of fine picture-wire. It was 
the first time William had ever done the 
honours of any establishment. He came to 
attention and smiled. 

‘^Well! Well!” Mr. Marsh nodded 
friendlily. ‘‘What are 

‘‘Camp-guard,” said William, improvising 
for the first time in his life. “Can I show 
you anything, sir.?” 

“No, thank’ee. My son was a Scout 
once. IVe just come to look round at 
things. ’No one tryin’ any cookin’ to¬ 
day.?” 

“No, sir.” 

“’Bout’s well. Pore boys! What you 
goin’ to have for dinner.? Tinned stuff.?” 

“I expect so, sir.” 

“D’you like it.?” 

“’Used to it.” William rather approved 
of this round person who wasted no time 
on abstract ideas. 

boys! Well! Well! It saves trouble 
—for the present. Knots and splices in 
your stummick afterwards—in ’ospital.” 


HIS GIFT 


loS 


Mr. Marsh looked at the cold camp cooking- 
place and its three big stones, and sniffed. 

‘‘Would you like it lit.?’’ said William, 
suddenly. 

“What for.?” 

“To cook with.” 

“What d’ you know about cookin’.?” Mr. 
Marsh’s little eyes opened wide. 

“Nothing, sir.” 

“What makes you think /’m a cook.?” 

“ By the way you looked at our cooking- 
place,” the mendacious William answered. 
The Prawn had always urged him to culti¬ 
vate habits of observation. They seemed 
easy—after you had observed the things. 

“Well! Well! Quite a young Sherlock, 
you are. ’Don’t think much o’ this, 
though.” Mr. Marsh began to stoop to 
rearrange the open-air hearth to his liking. 

“Show me how and I’ll do it,” said 
William. 

“ Shove that stone a little more to the left 
then. Steady—So! That’ll do! Got any 
wood.? No.? You slip across to the shop 
and ask them to give you some small brush- 
stuff from the oven. Stop! And my apron, 
too. Marsh is the name.” 

William left him chuckling wheezily. 


io6 LAND AND SEA TALES 


When he returned Mr. Marsh clad himself 
in a long white apron of office which showed 
so clearly that Carpenter from far off re¬ 
turned at once. 

H’sh! H’sh! ” said Mr. Marsh before he 
could speak. “You carry on with what 
you’re doing. Marsh is my name. My son 
was a Scout once. Buffaloes—Hendon-way. 
It’s all right. Don’t you grudge an old man 
enjoying himself.” 

The Walrus looked amazedly at William 
moving in three directions at once with his 
face on fire. 

“ It’s all right,” said William. “ He’s giv¬ 
ing us cooking-lessons.” Then—the words 
came into his mouth by themselves—“I’ll 
take the responsibility.” 

“Yes, yes! He knew I could cook. 
Quite a young Sherlock he is! You carry 
on.” Mr. Marsh turned his back on the 
Walrus and despatched William again with 
some orders to his shop across the road. 
“And you’d better tell ’em to put ’em all 
in a basket,” he cried after him. 

William returned with a fair assortment 
of mixed material, including eggs, two 
rashers of bacon, and a packet of patent 
flour concerning which last Mr. Marsh said 


HIS GIFT 


107 

things no baker should say about his own 
goods. The frying-pan came out of the 
push-cart, with some other oddments, and 
it was not till after it was greased that Mr. 
Marsh demanded William’s name. He got 
it in full, and it produced strange effects on 
the little fat man. 

‘‘An’ ’ow do you spell your middle 
name?” he asked. 

“G-l-a-double-s-e,” said William. 

“Might that be your mother’s?” William 
nodded. “Well! Well! I wonder now! I 
do wonder. It’s a great name. There was a 
Sawyer in the cooking line once, but ’e was a 
Frenchman and spelt it different. Glasse is 
serious though. And you say it was your 
ma’s.” He fell into an abstraction, frying- 
pan in hand. Anon, as he cracked an egg 
miraculously on its edge—“Whether you’re 
a descendant or not, it’s worth livin’ up to, 
a name like that.” 

“Why?” said William, as the egg slid into 
the pan and spread as evenly as paint under 
an expert’s hand. 

“I’ll tell you some day. She was a very 
great cook—but she’d have come expensive 
at to-day’s prices. Now, you take the pan 
an’ I’ll draw me own conclusions.” 



io8 LAND AND SEA TALES 


The boy worked the pan over the level red 
fire with a motion that he had learned some¬ 
how or other while ‘‘boiling up’' things for 
his uncle. It seemed to him natural and 
easy. Mr. Marsh watched in unbroken si¬ 
lence for at least two minutes. 

“It’s early to say—yet,” was his verdict. 
“But I ’ave ’opes. You ’ave good ’ands, 
an’ your knowin’ I was a cook shows you 
’ave the instinck. If you ’ave got the 
Touch—mark you, I only say if—but if 
you ’ave anything like the Genuine Touch, 
you’re provided for for life, further— 

don’t tilt her that way!—you ’old your 
neighbours, friends and employers in the 
’ollow of your ’and.” 

“How do you mean.?” said William, in¬ 
tent on his egg. 

“Everything which a man is depends 
on what ’e puts inside ’im,” was the reply. 
“A good cook’s a King of men—besides 
being thunderin’ well off if ’e don’t drink. 
It’s the only sure business in the whole round 
world; and /’ve been round it eight times, 
in the Mercantile Marine, before I married 
the second Mrs. M.” 

William, more interested in the pan than 
Mr. Marsh’s marriages, made no reply. 



HIS GIFT 


109 


‘‘Yes, a good cook,” Mr. Marsh went on 
reminiscently, “even on Board o’ Trade 
allowance, ’as brought many a ship to port 
that ’ud otherwise ’ave mut’nied on the 
’igh seas.” 

The eggs and bacon mellowed together. 
Mr. Marsh supplied some wonderful last 
touches and the result was eaten, with the 
Walrus’s help, sizzling out of the pan and 
washed down with some stone ginger-beer 
from the convenient establishment of Mr. 
E. M. Marsh outside the Park wall. 

“I’ve ruined me dinner,” Mr. Marsh 
confided to the boys, “but I ’aven’t en¬ 
joyed myself like this, not since Noah was 
an able seaman. You wash up, young 
Sherlock, an’ I’ll tell you something.” 

He filled an ancient pipe with eloquent 
tobacco, and while William scoured the 
pan, he held forth on the art and science 
and mystery of cooking as inspiredly as Mr. 
Jorrocks, Master of Foxhounds, had lec¬ 
tured upon the Chase. The burden of his 
song was Power—power which, striking 
directly at the stomach of man, makes 
the rudest polite, not to say sycophantic, 
towards a good cook, whether at sea, in 
camp, in the face of war, or (here he em- 


no LAND AND SEA TALES 

bellished his text with personal experiences) 
the crowded competitive cities where a good 
meal was as rare, he declared, as silk py¬ 
jamas in a pig-sty. “An’ mark you,*’ he 
concluded, “three times a day the ’aughtiest 
and most overbearin’ of ’em all ’ave to come 
crawling to you for a round belly-full. 
Put that in your pipe and smoke it out, 
young Sherlock!” 

He unloosed his sacrificial apron and 
rolled away. 

The Boy Scout is used to strangers 
who give him good advice on the smallest 
provocation; but strangers who fill you up 
with bacon and eggs and ginger-beer are 
few. 

“What started it all.^” the Walrus de¬ 
manded. 

“Well, I can’t exactly say,” William 
answered, and as he had never been known 
to give a coherent account of anything, the 
Walrus returned to his wires, and William 
lay out and dreamed in the fern among the 
cattle-flies. He had dismissed The Prawn 
altogether from his miraculously enlarging 
mind. Very soon he was on the High Seas, 
a locality which till that instant had never 
appealed to him, in a gale, issuing bacon 


HIS GIFT 


III 


and eggs to crews on the edge of mutiny. 
Next, he was at war, turning the tides of it 
to victory for his own land by meals of bacon 
and eggs that brought bemedalled Generals 
in troops like Pelicans, to his fire-place. 
Then he was sustaining his uncle, at the 
door of an enormous restaurant, with plates 
of bacon and eggs sent out by gilded com¬ 
missionaires such as guard the cinemas, 
while his uncle wept with gratitude and 
remorse, and The Prawn, badges and all, 
begged for scraps. 

His chin struck his chest and half waked 
him to fresh flights of glory. He might 
have the Genuine Touch, Mr. Marsh had 
said it. Moreover, he, the Mug, had a 
middle name which filled that great man 
with respect. All the 47th Postal District 
should ring with that name, even to the 
exclusion of the racing-news, in its evening 
papers. And on his return from camp, or 
perhaps a day or two later, he would defy 
his very uncle and escape for ever from the 
foul business of French-polishing. 

Here he slept generously and dreamlessly 
till evening, when the Pelicans returned, 
their pouches full of samples of uncookable 
vegetables and insects, and the Walrus 


112 LAND AND SEA TALES 


made his report of the day’s Camp doings 
to the Scoutmaster. 

‘‘Wait a minute, Walrus. You say the 
Mug actually did the cooking.^” 

“Mr. Marsh had him under instruction, 
sir. But the Mug did a lot of it—he held 
the pan over the fire. I saw him, sir. And 
he washed up afterwards.” 

“Did he?” said the Scoutmaster lightly. 
“Well, that’s something. But when the 
Walrus had gone Mr. Hale smote thrice 
upon his bare knees and laughed, as a Scout 
should, without noise. 

He thanked Mr. Marsh next morning for 
the interest he had shown in the camp, and 
suggested (this was while he was buying 
many very solid buns for a route-march) 
that nothing would delight the Pelicans 
more than a few words from Mr. Marsh on 
the subject of cookery, if he could see his 
way to it. 

“Quite so,” said Mr. Marsh, “/’m 
worth listenin’ to. Well! Well! I’ll be 
along this evening, and, maybe, I’ll bring 
some odds and ends with me. Send over 
young Sherlock-Glasse to ’elp me fetch 
’em. That's a boy with ’is stummick in the 
proper place. ’Know anything about ’im ? ” 


HIS GIFT 


113 


Mr. Hale knew a good deal, but he did not 
tell it all. He suggested that William him¬ 
self should be approached, and would ex¬ 
cuse him from the route-march for that 
purpose. 

‘‘Route-march!” said Mr. Marsh in 
horror. “Lor! The very worst use you 
can make of your feet is walkin’ on ’em. 
’Gives you bunions. Besides, ’e ain’t got the 
figure for marches. ’E’s a cook by build 
as well as instinck. ’Eavy in the run, oily 
in the skin, broad in the beam, short in the 
arm, buty mark you, light on the feet. That’s 
the way cooks ought to be issued. You 
never ’eard of a really good thin cook yet, 
did you.^ No. Nor me. An’ I’ve known 
millions that called ’emselves cooks.” 

Mr. Hare regretted that he had not stud¬ 
ied the natural history of cooks, and sent 
William over early in the day. 

Mr. Marsh spoke to the Pelicans for an 
hour that evening beside an open wood fire, 
from the ashes of which he drew forth 
(talking all the while) wonderful hot cakes 
called “dampers”; while from its top he 
drew off pans full of “lobscouse,” which he 
said was not to be confounded with “sal¬ 
magundi,” and a hair-raising compound of 


114 LAND AND SEA TALES 

bacon, cheese and onions all melted together. 
And while the Pelicans ate, he convulsed 
them with mirth or held them breathless 
with anecdotes of the High Seas and the 
World, so that the vote of thanks they 
passed him at the end waked the cows in the 
Park. But William sat wrapped in visions, 
his hands twitching sympathetically to Mr. 
Marsh’s wizardry among the pots and pans. 
He knew now what the name of Glasse 
signified; for he had spent an hour at the 
back of the baker’s shop reading, in a brown- 
leather book dated 1767 a. d. and called 
‘‘The Art of Cookery Made Plain and Easy 
by a Lady,” and that lady’s name, as it ap¬ 
peared in facsimile at the head of Chap. I, 
was “H. Glasse.” Torture would not have 
persuaded him, or Mr. Marsh, by that time, 
that she was not his direct ancestress; but, 
as a matter of form, he intended to ask his 
uncle. 

When The Prawn, very grateful that Mr. 
Marsh had made no reference to his notions 
of cookery, asked William what he thought 
of the lecture and exhibition, William came 
out of his dreams with a start, and “Oh, 
all right, I suppose, but I wasn’t listening 
much.” Then The Prawn, who always im- 


HIS GIFT 


IIS 

proved an occasion, lectured him on lack of 
attention; and William missed all that too. 
The question in his mind was whether his 
uncle would let him stay with Mr. Marsh 
for a couple of days after Camp broke up, 
or whether he would use the reply-paid tele¬ 
gram, which Mr. Marsh had sent him, for 
his own French-polishing concerns. When 
The Prawn’s voice ceased, he not only prom¬ 
ised to do better next time, but added, out 
of a vast and inexplicable pity that sud¬ 
denly rose up inside him, “And Tm grate¬ 
ful to you, Prawn. I am really.” 

On his return to town from that wonder- 
revealing visit, he found the Pelicans treat¬ 
ing him with a new respect. For one thing, 
the Walrus had talked about the bacon 
and eggs; for another. The Prawn, who when 
he let himself go, could be really funny, 
had given some artistic imitations of Mr. 
Marsh’s comments on his cookery. Lastly, 
Mr. Hale had laid down that William’s 
future employ would be to cook for the 
Pelicans when they camped abroad. “And 
look out that you don’t poison us too much,” 
he added. 

There were occasional mistakes and some 
very flat failures, but the Pelicans swallowed 


ii6 LAND AND SEA TALES 


them all loyally; no one had even a stomach¬ 
ache, and the office of Cook’s mate to Wil¬ 
liam was in great demand. The Prawn 
himself sought it next Spring when the 
Troop stole a couple of fair May days on 
the outskirts of a brick-field, and were very 
happy. But William set him aside in 
favour of a new and specially hopeless re¬ 
cruit; oily-skinned, fat, short-armed, but 
light on his feet, and with some notion of 
lifting pot-lids without wrecking or flooding 
the whole fire-place. 

‘‘You see. Prawn,” he explained, “cookin’ 
isn’t a thing one can just pick up.” 

“Yes, I could—watchin’ you,” The Prawn 
insisted. 

“No. Mr. Marsh says it’s a Gift—same 
as a Talent.” 

“D’you mean to tell me Rickworth’s got 
it, then.?” 

“Dunno. It’s my job to find that out— 
Mr. Marsh says. Anyway, Rickworth told 
me he liked cleaning out a fryin’ pan because 
it made him think of what it might be 
cookin’ next time.” 

“Well, if that isn’t silliness, it’s just 
greediness,” said The Prawn. “What about 
those dampers you were talking of when 



HIS GIFT 


117 

I bought the fire-lighters for you this morn- 
ing?- 

William drew one out of the ashes, tapped 
it lightly with his small hazel-wand of office, 
and slid it over, puffed and perfect, towards 
The Prawn. 

Once again the wave of pity—the Mas¬ 
ter’s pity for the mere consuming Public— 
swept over him as he watched The Prawn 
wolf it down. 

‘‘ I’m grateful to you. I reely am^ Prawn,” 
said William Glasse Sawyer. 

After all, as he was used to say in later 
years, if it hadn’t been for The Prawn, where 
would he have been.?^ 



PROLOGUE TO THE MASTER- 
COOK’S TALE 


This is what might be called a parody or imitation of 
the verses of Geoffrey Chaucer^ one of the earliest and 
the greatest of our English poets. It looks difficult to 
read, but you will find it comes quite easily if you say it 
aloud, remembering that where there is an accent over 
the end of a word, that word is pronounced as two 
syllables—not one. Snailes,” for instance, would be 
spoken as snai-les” and so on. 

W ITH us there rade a Maister-Cook 
that came 

From the Rochelle which is neere Angouleme. 
Littel hee was, but rounder than a topp, 
And his small herd hadde dipped in manie a 
soppe. 

His honde was smoother than beseemeth 
mann’s, 

And his discoorse was all of marzipans,^ 

Of tripes of Caen, or Burdeux snailes swote,^ 
And Seinte Menhoulde wher cooken pigges- 
foote.^ 

kind of sticky sweatmeat. ^Bordeaux snails are specially 
large and sweet. ^They grill pigs’-feet still at St. Menehoulde, not 
far from Verdun, better than anywhere else in all France. 

ii8 



THE MASTER-COOK 


119 

To Thoulouse and to Bress and Carcasson 
For pyes and fowles and chesnottes hadde 
hee wonne;^ 

Of hammes of Thuringie^ colde hee prate, 
And well hee knew what Princes hadde on 
plate 

At Christmas-tide, from Artois to Gascogne. 

Lordinges, quod hee, manne liveth nat alone 
By bred, but meates rost and seethed, and 
broth. 

And purchasable^ deinties, on mine othe. 
Honey and hote gingere well liketh hee. 
And whales-flesch mortred^ with spicerie. 
For, lat be all how man denie or carpe,^ 
Him thries a daie his honger maketh sharpe. 
And setteth him at boorde® with hawkes 
eyne. 

Snuffing what dish is set beforne to deyne. 
Nor, till with meate he all-to fill to 
brim. 

None other matter nowher mooveth him. 
Lat holie Seintes sterve^ as bookes boast. 
Most mannes soule is in his bellie most. 

^Gone—to get pates of ducks’ liver at Toulouse; fatted poultry 
at Bourg in Bresse, on the road to Geneva; and very large chest¬ 
nuts in sugar at Carcassonne about forty miles from Toulouse, 
^his would probably be some sort of wild boar ham from Ger¬ 
many. ^Expensive. '‘Beaten up. ^Sneer or despise. ^Brings 
him to table. ^Starve. 



120 LAND AND SEA TALES 


For, as man thinketh in his hearte is hee, 
But, as hee eateth so his thought shall bee. 
And Holie Fader’s selP (with reveraunce) 
Oweth to Cooke his port and his presaunce. 
Wherbye it cometh past disputison^ 

Cookes over alle men have dominion. 
Which follow them as schippe her gou- 
vernaiE ' 

Enoff of wordes—beginneth heere my tale:- 

^The Pope himself, who depends on his cook for being healthy 
and well-fed. ^Dispute or argument. ^Men are influenced by 
their cooks as ships are steered by their rudders. 




A FLIGHT OF FACT 


A FLIGHT OF FACT 


Most of this tale actually happened during the War 
about the year igi6 or igiy, but it was much funnier as 
I heard it told by an English Naval officer than it is as 
I have written it from memory. It shows, what one al¬ 
ways believed was true, that there is nothing that cannot 
happen in the Navy. 

H M. S. Gardenia (we will take her name 
. from the Herbaceous Border which 
belonged to the sloops, though she was a 
destroyer by profession) came quietly back 
to her berth some time after midnight, and 
disturbed half a dozen of her sisters as she 
settled down. They all talked about it 
next morning, especially Phlox and Stephan- 
Otis, her left- and right-hand neighbours in 
the big basin on the east coast of England, 
that was crowded with destroyers. 

But the soul of the Gardenia —Lieutenant- 
in-Command H. R. Duckett—was lifted 
far above insults. What he had done 
during his last trip had been well done. 
Vastly more important —Gardenia was in 


123 



124 


LAND AND SEA TALES 


for a boiler-clean—which meant four days’ 
leave for her commanding officer. 

‘‘Where did you get that fender from, 
you dock-yard burglar.^” Stephanotis clam¬ 
oured over his rail, for Gardenia was wear¬ 
ing a large coir-matting fender, evidently 
fresh from store, over her rail. It creaked 
with newness. “You common thief of the 
beach, where did you find that new fender.?” 

The only craft that a destroyer will, some¬ 
times, not steal equipment from is a de¬ 
stroyer; which accounts for the purity of her 
morals and the loftiness of her conversation, 
and her curiosity in respect to stolen fillings. 

Duckett, unmoved, went below, to return 
with a valise which he carried on to His 
Majesty’s quarter-deck, and, atop of a suit 
of rat-catcher clothes, crammed into it a 
pair of ancient pigskin gaiters. 

Here Phlox, assisted by her Dandy Din- 
mont, Dinah, who had been trained to howl 
at certain notes in her master’s voice, gave 
a spirited and imaginary account of Gar¬ 
denia s return the night before, which was 
compared to that of an ambulance with a 
lady-driver. Duckett retaliated by slipping 
on to his head for one coquettish instant a 
gravy-coloured soft cloth cap. It was the 


A FLIGHT OF FACT 


I2S 

last straw. Phlox and Stephanotis, who 
had no hope of any leave for the present, 
pronounced it an offence, only to be wiped 
out by drinks. 

‘‘All things considered,’’ said Duckett. 
“I don’t care if I do. Come along!” and, 
the hour being what it was, he gave the 
necessary orders through the wardroom’s 
tiny skylight. The captains came. Phlox 
—Lieutenant Commander Jerry Marlett, a 
large and weather-beaten person, docked 
himself in the arm-chair by the ward¬ 
room stove with his cherished Dinah in his 
arms. Great possessions and much land, 
inherited from an uncle, had removed him 
from the Navy on the eve of war. Three 
days after the declaration of it he was back 
again, and had been very busy ever since. 
Stephanotis —Lieutenant-in-Command Au¬ 
gustus Holwell Rayne, alias “The Damper,” 
because of his pessimism, spread himself out 
on the settee. He was small and agile, but 
of gloomy outlook, which a D. S. O. earned, 
he said, quite by mistake, could not lighten. 
“Horse” Duckett, Gardenia s skipper, was 
a reversion to the primitive Marryat type 
—a predatory, astute, resourceful pirate, too 
well known to all His Majesty’s dockyards, a 




126 LAND AND SEA TALES 


man of easily injured innocence who could 
always prove an alibi, and in whose ship, if 
his torpedo-coxswain had ever allowed any 
one to look there, several sorts of missing 
Government property might have been 
found. His ambition was to raise pigs 
(animals he only knew as bacon) in Shrop¬ 
shire (a county he had never seen) after the 
war, so he waged his war with zeal to bring 
that happy day nearer. He sat in the arm¬ 
chair by the door, whence he controlled the 
operations of ‘‘Crippen,’’ the wardroom 
steward, late of Bolitho’s Travelling Circus 
and Swings, who had taken to the high seas 
to avoid the attentions of the Police ashore. 

As usual, Duckett’s character had been 
blackened by My Lords of the Admiralty, 
and he was in the midst of a hot campaign 
against them. An able-seaman’s widowed 
mother had sent a ham to her son whose 
name was E. R. Davids. Unfortunately, 
Engineroom-Artificer E. Davies, who swore 
that he had both a mother and expectations 
of hams from her, came across the ham first, 
and, misreading its address, had had it 
boiled for, and at once eaten by, the En¬ 
gineers’ mess. E. R. Davids, a vindictive 
soul, wrote to his mother, who, it seems. 


A FLIGHT OF FACT 


127 


wrote to the Admiralty, who, according to 
Duckett, wrote to him daily every day for a 
month to know what had become of E. R. 
Davids’ ham. In the meantime the guilty 
Engineroom-Artificer E. Davies had been 
transferred to a sloop off the Irish coast. 

“An’ what the dooce am I to do?” 
Duckett asked his guests plaintively. 

“Apply for leave to go to Ireland with a 
stomach-pump and heave the ham out of 
Davies,” Jerry suggested promptly. 

“That’s rather a wheeze,” said Duckett. 
“I had thought of marrying Davids’ mother 
to settle the case. Anyhow, it was all 
Crippen’s fault for not steering the ham into 
the wardroom when it came aboard. Don’t 
let it occur again, Crippen. Hams are 
going to be very scarce.” 

“Well, now you’ve got all that off your 
chest”—^Jerry Marlett lowered his voice— 
“suppose you tell us about what happened 
—the night before last.” 

The talk became professional. Duckett 
produced certain evidence—still damp—in 
support of the claims that he had sent in 
concerning the fate of a German submarine, 
and gave a chain of facts and figures and 
bearings that the others duly noted. 





128 LAND AND SEA TALES 


‘‘And how did your Acting Sub do?” 
asked Jerry at last. 

“Oh, very fair, but I didn’t tell him so, of 
course. They’re hard enough to hold at 
the best of times, these makee-do officers. 
Have you noticed that they are always above 
their job—always thinkin’ round the corner 
when they’re thinkin’ at all. On our way 
back, this young merchant o’ mine—when 
I’d almost made up my mind to tell him he 
wasn’t as big tripes as he looked—told me 
his one dream in life was to fly. Fly! He 
flew alright by the time I’d done with him, 
but—imagine a Sub tellin one a thing like 
that! ‘It must be so interestin’ to fly,’ he 
said. The whole North Sea one blooming 
burgoo of what-come-nexts, an’ this pup 
complainin’ of lack of interest in it! Fly! 
Fly! When / was a Sub-Lootenant-” 

He turned pathetically towards The 
Damper, who had known him in that rank in 
the Mediterranean. 

“There wasn’t much flyin’ in our day,” 
said The Damper mournfully. “ But I 
can’t remember anything else we didn’t 
do.” 

“Quite so; but we had some decency 
knocked into us. The new breed wouldn’t 





A FLIGHT OF FACT 


129 


know decency if they met it on a dungfork. 
Thafs what I mean.” 

“When / was Actin’ Sub,” Jerry opened 
thoughtfully, “in the Polycarp —the pious 
Polycarp —Nineteen-O-Seven, I got nine 
cuts of the best from the Senior Sub for 
occupyin’ the bathroom ten seconds too 
long. Twenty minutes later, just when the 
welts were beginnin’ to come up, y’ know, I 
was sent off in the gig with a Corporal o’ 
Marines an’ a private to fetch the Headman 
of All the Pelungas aboard. He was wanted 
for slavery, or barratry, or bigamy or some¬ 
thing.” 

“All the Pelungas.^” Duckett repeated 
with interest. “’Odd you should mention 
that part of the world. What are the 
Pelungas like.^” 

“Very nice. Hundreds of islands and 
millions of coral reefs with atolls an’ lagoons 
an’ palm-trees, an’ all the population 
scullin’ round in outrigger canoes between 
’em like a permanent regatta. Filthy navi¬ 
gation, though. Polycarp had to lie five 
miles out on account of the reefs (even then 
our navigator was tearin’ his hair) an’ I 
had an hour’s steerin’ on hot hard thwarts. 
Talk o’ tortures! You know. We landed 



130 LAND AND SEA TALES 

in a white lather at the boat-steps of the 
Headman’s island. The Headman wasn’t 
takin’ any at first. He’d drawn up his 
whole army—three hundred strong, with old 
Martini rifles an’ a couple of ancestral seven- 
pounders in front of his fort. We didn’t know 
anything about his domestic arrangements. 
We just dropped in among ’em so to say. 
Then my Corporal of Marines—the fattest 
man in the Service bar one—fell down the 
landin’ steps. The Headman had a Prime 
Minister—about as fat as my Corporal—and 
he helped him up. Well, that broke the ice a 
bit. The Prime Minister was a statesman. 
He poured oil on the crisis, while the Head¬ 
man cursed me and the Navy and the British 
Government, and I kept wrigglin’ in my 
white ducks to keep ’em from drawin’ tight 
on me. You know how it feels! I remem¬ 
ber I told the Headman the Polycarp ’ud 
blow him an’ his island out of the water if he 
didn’t come along quick. She could have 
done it—in a week or two; but we were 
scrubbin’ hammocks at the time. I for¬ 
got that little fact for the minute. I was 
a bit hot—all over. The Prime Minister 
soothed us down again, an’ by and by the 
Headman said he’d pay us a state call—as a 



A FLIGHT OF FACT 


131 

favour. I didn’t care what he called it s’- 
long as he came. So I lay about a quarter of 
a mile off-shore in the gig, in case the seven- 
pounders pooped off—I knew the Martinis 
couldn’t hit us at that range—and I waited 
for him till he shoved off in his State barge 
—forty rowers a side. Would you believe it, 
he wanted to take precedence of the White 
Ensign on the way to the ship ? I had to fall 
him in behind the gig and bring him along¬ 
side properly. I was so sore I could hardly 
get aboard at the finish.” 

“What happened to the Headman.^” 
said The Damper. 

“Nothing. He was acquitted or con¬ 
demned—I forget which—but he was a 
perfect gentleman. We used to go sailing 
with him and his people—dancing with ’em 
on the beach and all that sort of thing. / 
don’t want to meet a nicer community 
than the Pelungaloos. They aren’t used 
to white men—but they’re first-class learn- 
ers. 

“Yes, they do seem a cheery crowd,” 
Duckett commented. 

“Where have you come across them?” 
said Jerry. 

“Nowhere; but this Acting Sub of mine 






132 LAND AND SEA TALES 

has got a cousin who’s been flying down 
there.” 

“Flying in All the Pelungas.^” Jerry 
cried. “That’s impossible!” 

“In these days? Where’s your bright 
lexicon of youth ? Nothing’s impossible any¬ 
where now,” Duckett replied. “All the 
best people fly.” 

“Count me out,” Jerry grunted. “We 
went up once, Dinah, little dog, and it made 
us both very sick, didn’t it? When did it 
all happen. Horse?” 

“Some time last year. This chap, my 
Sub’s cousin—a man called Baxter—went 
adrift among All the Pelungas in his machine 
and failed to connect with his ship. He was 
reported missing for months. Then he 
turned up again. That’s all.” 

“He was called Baxter?” said The 
Damper. “Hold on a shake! I wonder if 
he’s ‘Beloo’ Baxter, by any chance. There 
was a chap of that name about five years 
ago on the China Station. He had himself 
tattooed all over, regardless, in Rangoon. 
Then he got as good as engaged to a woman 
in Hongkong—rich woman too. But the 
Pusser of his ship gave him away. He had a 
regular cinema of frogs and dragonflies up 



A FLIGHT OF FACT 


133 


his legs. And that was only the beginnin’ 
of the show. So she broke off the engage¬ 
ment, and he half-killed the Pusser, and 
then he became a Buddhist, or something.’’ 

^‘That couldn’t have been this Baxter, or 
my Sub would have told me,” said Duckett. 
“My Sub’s a morbid-minded young ani¬ 
mal.” 

''Maskee^ your Sub’s mind!” said Jerry. 
“What was this Baxter man—plain or 
coloured—doin’ in All my Pelungas.?” 

“As far as I can make out,” said Duckett, 
“Lootenant Baxter was flyin’ in those parts 
—with an observer—out of a ship.” 

“Yes, but what for?'' Jerry insisted. 
“And what ship 

“He was flyin’ for exercise, I suppose, an’ 
his ship was the Cormorang. D’you feel 
wiser.? An’ he flew, an’ he flew, an’ he flew 
till, between him an’ his observer and the 
low visibility and Providence and all that 
sort of thing, he lost his ship—just like some 
other people I know. Then he flapped 
about huntin’ for her till dusk among the 
Pelungas, an’ then he effected a landin’ on 
the water.” 

“A nasty wet business—landin’ that way. 


^Never mind. 









134 


LAND AND SEA TALES 


Dinah. We know,” said Jerry into the keen 
little cocked ear in his lap. 

“Then he taxied about in the dark till he 
taxied on to a coral-reef and couldn’t get 
the machine off. Coral ain’t like mud, is it 
The question was to Jerry, but the insult was 
addressed to The Damper, who had lately 
spent eighteen hours on a soft and tenacious 
shoal off the East Coast. The Damper 
launched a kick at his host from where he 
lay along the settee. 

“Then,” Duckett went on, “this Baxter- 
man got busy with his wireless and S O S’ed 
like winkie till the tide came and floated 
the old bus off the reef, and they taxied over 
to another island in the dark.” 

“Thousands of Islands in All the Pe- 
lungas,” Jerry murmured. “Likewise reefs 
—hairy ones. What about the reefs.?” 

“Oh, they kept on hittin’ reefs in the 
dark, till it occurred to them to fire their 
signal lights to see ’em by. So they went 
blazin’ an’ stinkin’ and taxyin’ up and down 
the reefs till they found a gap in one of ’em 
and they taxied bung on to an uninhabited 
island.” 

“That must have been good for the ma¬ 
chine,” was Jerry’s comment. 



A FLIGHT OF FACT 


I 3 S 

‘H don’t deny it. I’m only tailin’ you 
what my Sub told me. Baxter wrote it all 
home to his people, and the letters have been 
passed round the family. Well, then o’ 
course, it rained. It rained all the rest of 
the night, up to the afternoon of the next 
day. (It always does when you’re in a hole.) 
They tried to start their engine in the in¬ 
tervals of climbin’ palm-trees for coco-nuts. 
They’d only a few buscuits and some water 
with ’em.” 

“’Don’t like climbin’ palm-trees. It 
scrapes you raw,” The Damper moaned. 

“An’ when they weren’t climbin’ or 
crankin’ their engine, they tried to get into 
touch with the natives on the next nearest 
island. But the natives weren’t havin’ any. 
They took to the bush.” 

“Ah!” said Jerry sympathetically. 
“That aeroplane was too much for ’em. 
Otherwise, they’re the most cosy, confiden¬ 
tial lot I ever met. Well, what happened V 

“Baxter sweated away at his engine till 
she started up again. Then he flew round 
lookin’ for his ship some more till his petrol 
ran out. Then he landed close to another un¬ 
inhabited island and tried to taxi up to it.” 

“Why was he so keen on z^Tzinhabited 


136 LAND AND SEA TALES 

islands? I wish Fd been there. Fd ha’ 
shown him round the town,” said Jerry. 

‘‘I don’t know his reasons, but that was 
what he wrote home to his people,” Duckett 
went on. “Not havin’ any power by that 
time, his machine blew on to another reef 
and there they were! No grub, no petrol, 
and plenty of sharks! So they snugged 
her down. I don’t know how one snugs 
down an aeroplane,” Duckett admitted, 
“but Baxter took the necessary steps to 
reduce the sail-area, and cut the spanker- 
boom out of the tail-tassels or whatever it 
is they do on an aeroplane when they want 
her to be quiet. Anyhow, they more or 
less secured the bus to that reef so they 
thought she wouldn’t fetch adrift; and they 
tried to coax a canoe over that happened to 
be passing. Nothin’doin’ there! ’Canoe made 
one bunk of it.” 

“He tickled ’em the wrong way,” Jerry 
sighed. “There’s a song they sing when 
they’re fishing.” He began to hum dole¬ 
fully. 

“I expect Baxter didn’t know that tune,” 
Duckett interrupted. “He an’ his ob¬ 
server cursed the canoe a good deal, an’ 
then they went in for swimmin’ stunts all 


A FLIGHT OF FACT 


137 


among the sharks, until they fetched up on 
the next island when they came to it—it took 
^em an hour to swim there—but the minute 
they landed the natives all left. ’Seems 
to me,” said Duckett thoughtfully, ‘‘ Baxter 
and his observer must have spread a pretty 
healthy panic scullin’ about All the Pelungas 
in their shirts.” 

“But why shirtssaid Jerry. “Those 
waters are perfectly warm.” 

“If you come to that, why not shirts?” 
Duckett retorted. “A shirt’s a badge of 
civilization-” 

“Never mind your shirts. What hap¬ 
pened after that?” said The Damper. 

“They went to sleep. They were tired 
by that time—oddly enough. The natives 
on that island had left everything standing 
when they bunked—-fires lighted, chickens 
runnin’ about, and so forth. Baxter slept 
in one of the huts. About midnight some 
of the bold boys stole back again. Baxter 
heard ’em talkin’ just outside, and as he 
didn’t want his face trod on, he said ‘Sa¬ 
laam.’ That cleared the island for the 
second time. The natives jumped three 
foot into the air and shoved off.” 

“Good Lord!” said Jerry impatiently. 





138 LAND AND SEA TALES 

‘‘/V have had ’em eating out of my hand in 
ten seconds. ‘Salaam’ isn’t the word to use 
at all. What he ought to have said-” 

“Well, anyhow, he didn’t,” Duckett re¬ 
plied. “He and his observer had their 
sleep out an’ they woke in the mornin’ with 
ragin’ appetites and a strong sense of de¬ 
cency. The first thing they annexed was 
some native loin-cloths off a bush. Baxter 
wrote all this home to his people, you know. 
I expect he was well brought up.” 

“If he was ‘Beloo’ Baxter no one would 
notice-” The Damper began. 

“ He wasn’t. He was just a simple, virtu¬ 
ous Naval Officer—like me. He an’ his ob¬ 
server navigated the island in full dress in 
search of the natives, but they’d gone and 
taken the canoe with ’em. Baxter was so 
depressed at their lack of confidence that he 
killed a chicken an’ plucked it and drew it 
(I bet neither of you know how to draw 
fowls) an’ boiled it and ate it all at once.” 

“Didn’t he feed his observer?” The 
Damper asked. “I’ve a little brother 
what’s an observer up in the air. I’d hate 
to think he-” 

“The observer was kept busy wavin’ his 
shirt on the beach in order to attract the at- 






A FLIGHT OF FACT 


139 


tention of local fishin’ craft. That was 
what he was for. After breakfast Baxter 
joined him an’ the two of ’em waved shirts 
for two hours on the beach. An’ that’s the 
sort of thing my Sub prefers to servin’ with 
me !—Me ! After a bit, the Pelungaloos 
decided that they must be harmless luna¬ 
tics, and one canoe stood pretty close in, an’ 
they swam out to her. But here’s a curious 
thing! Baxter wrote his people that, when 
the canoe came, his observer hadn’t any 
shirt at all. ’Expect he’d expended it 
wavin’ for succour. But Baxter’s shirt was 
all right. He went out of his way to tell his 
people so. An’ my Sub couldn’t see the 
humour of it one little bit. How does it 
strike you.?” 

^‘Perfectly simple,” said Jerry. ^‘Loo- 
tenant Baxter as executive officer in charge 
took his subordinate’s shirt owin’ to the 
exigencies of the Service. I’d ha’ done the 
same. Pro-ceed.” 

‘‘There’s worse to follow. As soon as 
they got aboard the canoe and the natives 
found they didn’t bite, they cottoned to ’em 
no end. ’Gave ’em grub and dry loin¬ 
cloths and betel-nut to chew. What’s betel- 
nut like, Jerry.?” 


140 LAND AND SEA TALES 

"‘Grateful an’ comfortin’. Warms you 
all through and makes you spit pink. It’s 
non-intoxicating.” 

“Oh! I’ve never tried it. Well then, 
there was Baxter spittin’ pink in a loin¬ 
cloth an’ a canoe-ful of Pelungaloo fisher¬ 
men, with his shirt dryin’ in the breeze. 
’Got that.^ Well, then his aeroplane, which 
he thought he had secured to the reef of the 
next island, began to drift out to sea. That 
boy had to keep his eyes open, I tell you. 
He wanted the natives to go in and makee- 
catchee the machine, and there was a big 
palaver about it. They naturally didn’t 
care to compromise themselves with strange 
idols, but after a bit they lined up a dozen 
canoes—no, eleven, to be precise—Baxter 
was awfully precise in his letters to his peo¬ 
ple—an’ tailed on to the aeroplane an’ towed 
it to an island.” 

“Excellent,” said Jerry Marlett, the com¬ 
plete Lieutenant-Commander. “I was get- 
tin’ worried about His Majesty’s property. 
Baxter must have had a way with him. A 
loin-cloth ain’t uniform, but it’s dashed 
comfortable. An’ how did All my Pe- 
lungaloos treat ’em.^” 

“We-ell!” said Duckett, “Baxter was 





A FLIGHT OF FACT 


141 

writin’ home to his people, so I expect he 
toned things down a bit, but, readin’ be¬ 
tween the lines, it looks as if—an’ that's why 
my Sub wants to take up flyin’ of course— 
it looks as if, from then on, they had what 
you might call Garden-of-Eden picnics for 
weeks an’ weeks. The natives put ’em under 
a guard o’ sorts just for the look of the thing, 
while the news was sent to the Headman, 
but as far as I can make out from my Sub’s 
reminiscences of Baxter’s letters, their 
guard consisted of the entire male and fe¬ 
male population goin’ in swimmin’ with ’em 
twice a day. At night they had concerts—• 
native songs versus music-hall—in alternate 
what d’you call ’em.? Anti-somethings. 
’Phone, ain’t it.?” 

‘‘They are a musical race! I’m glad he 
struck that side of their nature,” Jerry mur¬ 
mured. 

“I’m envious,” Duckett protested. “Why 
should the Flyin’ Corps get all the plums.? 
But Baxter didn’t forget His Majesty’s 
aeroplane. He got ’em to tow it to his 
island o’ delights, and in the evenings he 
an’ his observer, between the musical turns, 
used to give the women electric shocks off 
the wireless. And, one time, he told his 




142 


LAND AND SEA TALES 


observer to show ’em his false teeth, and 
when he took ’em out the people all bolted.” 

‘‘But that’s in Rider Haggard. It’s in 
‘ King Solomon’s Mines’,” The Damper re¬ 
marked. 

“P’raps that’s what put it into Baxter’s 
head then,” said Duckett. “Or else,” he 
suggested warily, “ Baxter wanted to crab 
his observer’s chances with some lady.” 

“Then he was a fool,” The Damper 
snarled. “It might have worked the other 
way. It generally does.” 

“Well, one can’t foresee everything,” said 
Duckett. “Anyhow, Baxter didn’t com¬ 
plain. They lived there for weeks and 
weeks, singin’ songs together and bathin’ 
an’—oh, yes!—gamblin’. Baxter made a 
set of dice too. He doesn’t seem to have 
neglected much. He said it was just to 
pass the time away, but I wonder what he 
threw for. I wish I knew him. His letters 
to his people are too colourless. What a life 
he must have led! Women, dice and song, 
an’ your pay rollin’ up behind you in per¬ 
fect safety with no exertion on your part.” 

“There’s a dance they dance on moonlight 
nights,” said Jerry, “with just a few banana 
leaves- Never mind. Go ahead!” 




A FLIGHT OF FACT 


143 


‘‘All things bright and beautiful—fineesh,” 
Duckett mourned. “Presently the Head¬ 
man of All the Pelungas came along-” 

“"My friendI hope it was. A first- 
class sportsman,’" said Jerry. 

“Baxter didn’t say. Anyhow, he turned 
up and they were taken over to the capital 
island till they could be sent back to their 
own ship. The Headman did ’em up to the 
nines in every respect while they were with 
him (Baxter’s quite enthusiastic over it, 
even in writin’ to his own people), but, o’ 
course, there’s nothing like first love, is 
there.? They must have felt partin’ with 
their first loves. / always do. And then 
they were put into the full uniform of All 
the Pelungaloo Army. What’s that like, 
Jerry? You’ve seen it.” 

“ It’s a cross between a macaw an’ a rain- 
bow-ended mandrill. Very tasty.” 

“Just as they were gettin’ used to that, 
and they’d taught the Headman and his 
Court to sing: ‘Hello! Hello! Who’s 
your lady friend?" they were embarked on a 
dirty common sailin’ craft an’ taken over 
the ocean and returned to the Cormorang, 
which, o’ course, had reported ’em missing 
and dead months before. They had one 



144 land and sea TALES 

final kick-up before returnin’ to duty. You 
see, they’d both grown torpedo-beards in 
the Pelungas, and they were both in Pe- 
lungaloo uniform. Consequently, when they 
went aboard the Cormorang they weren’t 
recognized till they were half-way down to 
their cabins.” 

^‘And then.^” both Captains asked at 
once. 

^‘That’s where Baxter breaks off—even 
though he’s writin’ to his own people. He’s 
so apologetic to ’em for havin’ gone missin’ 
and worried ’em, an’ he’s so sinful proud 
of havin’ taught the Headman music-hall 
songs, that he only said that they had ‘some 
reception aboard the Cormorang. ’ It lasted 
till midnight.” 

“It is possible. What about their ma¬ 
chine.^” said Jerry. 

“The Cormorang ran down to the Pe¬ 
lungas and retrieved it all right. But I 
should have liked to have seen that recep¬ 
tion. There is nothing I’d ha’ liked better 
than to have seen that reception. And it 
isn’t as if I hadn’t seen a reception or two 
either.” 

“The leaf-signal is made, sir,” said the 
Quartermaster at the door. 



A FLIGHT OF FACT 


145 

‘‘Twelve-twenty-four train,” Duckett 
muttered. “Can do.” He rose, adding, 
“Fm going to scratch the backs of swine for 
the next three days. G’wout!” 

The well-trained servant was already 
fleeting along the edge of the basin with his 
valise. Stephanotis and Phlox returned to 
their own ships, loudly expressing envy and 
hatred. Duckett paused for a moment at 
his gang-way rail to beckon to his torpedo- 
coxswain, a Mr. Wilkins, a peacetime sailor 
of mild and mildewed aspect who had fol¬ 
lowed Duckett’s shady fortunes for some 
years. 

“Wilkins,” he whispered, “where did 
we get that new starboard fender of ours 
from.^” 

“Orf the dredger, sir. She was asleep 
when we came in,” said Wilkins through 
lips that scarcely seemed to move. “But 
our port one come orf the water-boat. We 
’ad to over’aul our moorin’s in the skiff last 
night, sir, and we—er—found it on ’er.” 

“Well, well, Wilkins. Keep the home 
fires burning,” and Lieutenant-in-Command 
H. R. Duckett sped after his servant in the 
direction of the railway-station. But not 
so fast that he could outrun a melody played 


146 LAND AND SEA TALES 

aboard the Phlox on a concertina to which 
manly voices bore the burden: 

When the enterprisin’ burglar ain’t aburglin’— 
ain’t aburglin’, 

When the cut-throat is not occupied with crime 
—’pied with crime. 

He loves to hear the little brook agurglin’- 

Moved, Heaven knows, whether by con¬ 
science or kindliness. Lieutenant Duckett 
smiled at the policeman on the Dockyard 
gates. 



STALKY 







“STALKY” 


This happens to he the first story that was written 
<oncerning the adventures and performances of three 
schoolboys — ^‘Stalky” McTurk and BeetleFor 
some reason or other, it was never put into the book, 
called Stalky ^ Co.f* that was made out of the stories, 
A certain amount of it, I am sorry to say, is founded on 
fact, though that is no recommendation; and the only 
moral that I can see in it is, that when for any reason 
you happen to get into a tight place, you have a better 
chance of coming out of it comfortably if you keep your 
head than if you get excited and dont stop to think. 

A nd then/’ it was a boy’s voice, curi- 
. ously level and even, “De Vitre said 
we were beastly funks not to help, and I 
said there were too many chaps in it to suit 
us. Besides, there’s bound to be a mess 
somewhere or other, with old De Vitre in 
charge. Wasn’t I right. Beetle.?” 

“And, anyhow, it’s a silly biznai, bung 
through. What’ll they do with the beastly 
cows when they’ve got ’em.? You can milk 
a cow—if she’ll stand still. That’s all right, 

but drivin’ ’em about-” 

“You’re a pig. Beetle.” 


149 




150 LAND AND SEA TALES 

‘‘No, I ain’t. What is the sense of drivin’ 
a lot of cows up from the Burrows to—to— 
where is it.^” 

“They’re tryin’ to drive ’em up to Too- 
wey’s farmyard at the top of the hill—the 
empty one, where we smoked last Tuesday. 
It’s a revenge. Old Vidley chivied De Vitre 
twice last week for ridin’ his ponies on the 
Burrows; and De Vitre’s goin’ to lift as 
many of old Vidley’s cattle as he can and 
plant ’em up the hill. He’ll muck it, 
though—with Parsons, Orrin and Howlett 
helpin’ him. They’ll only yell, an’ shout, 
an’ bunk if they see Vidley.” 

might have managed it,” said Mc- 
Turk slowly, turning up his coat-collar 
against the rain that swept over the Bur¬ 
rows. His hair was of the dark mahogany 
red that goes with a certain temperament. 

“We should,” Corkran replied with equal 
confidence. “ But they’ve gone into it as if 
it was a sort of spadger-hunt. I’ve never 
done any cattleliftin’, but it seems to me-e-e 
that one might just as well be stalky about 
a thing as not.” 

The smoking vapours of the Atlantic 
drove in wreaths above the boys’ heads. 
Out of the mist to windward, beyond the 





‘‘STALKY” 


iSi 

grey bar of the Pebble Ridge, came the un¬ 
ceasing roar of mile-long Atlantic rollers. 
To leeward, a few stray ponies and cattle, 
the property of the Northam potwallopers, 
and the unwilling playthings of the boys 
in their leisure hours, showed through the 
haze. The three boys had halted by the 
Cattle-gate which marks the limit of culti¬ 
vation, where the fields come down to the 
Burrows from Northam Hill. Beetle, shock¬ 
headed and spectacled, drew his nose to and 
fro along the wet top-bar; McTurk shifted 
from one foot to the other, watching the 
water drain into either print; while Corkran 
whistled through his teeth as he leaned 
against a sod-bank, peering into the mist. 

A grown or sane person might have called 
the weather vile; but the boys at that School 
had not yet learned the national interest in 
climate. It was a little damp, to be sure; 
but it was always damp in the Easter term, 
and sea-wet, they held, could not give one 
a cold under any circumstances. Mackin¬ 
toshes were things to go to church in, but 
crippling if one had to run at short notice 
across heavy country. So they waited 
serenely in the downpour, clad as their 
mothers would not have cared to see. 


152 LAND AND SEA TALES 

‘‘I say, Corky,” said Beetle, wiping his 
spectacles for the twentieth time, “if we 
aren’t going to help De Vitre, what are we 
here for?” 

“We’re goin’ to watch,” was the answer. 
“Keep your eye on your Uncle and he’ll 
pull you through.” 

“It’s an awful biznai, driving cattle—in 
open country,” said McTurk, who, as the 
son of an Irish baronet, knew something of 
these operations. “They’ll have to run 
half over the Burrows after ’em. ’S’pose 
they’re ridin’ Vidley’s ponies?” 

“De Vitre’s sure to be. He’s a dab on a 
horse. Listen! What a filthy row they’re 
making. They’ll be heard for miles.” 

The air filled with whoops and shouts, 
cries, words of command, the rattle of 
broken golf-clubs, and a clatter of hooves. 
Three cows with their calves came up to the 
Cattle-gate at a milch-canter, followed by 
four wild-eyed bullocks and two rough- 
coated ponies. A fat and freckled youth of 
fifteen trotted behind them, riding bare- 
back and brandishing a hedge-stake. De 
Vitre, up to a certain point, was an inven¬ 
tive youth, with a passion for horse-exercise 
that the Northam farmers did not en- 



‘‘STALKY” 


IS 3 

courage. Farmer Vidley, who could not 
understand that a grazing pony likes being 
galloped about, had once called him a thief, 
and the insult rankled. Hence the raid. 

“Come on,” he cried over his shoulder. 
“Open the gate, Corkran, or they’ll all cut 
back again. We’ve had no end of bother to 
get ’em. Oh, won’t old Vidley be wild!” 

Three boys on foot ran up, “shooing” the 
cattle in excited and amateur fashion, till 
they headed them into the narrow, high- 
banked Devonshire lane that ran uphill. 

“Come on, Corkran. It’s no end of a 
lark,” pleaded De Vitre; but Corkran shook 
his head. The affair had been presented to 
him after dinner that day as a completed 
scheme, in which he might, by favour, play 
a minor part. And Arthur Lionel Corkran, 
No. 104, did not care for lieutenancies. 

“You’ll only be collared,” he cried, as he 
shut the gate. “Parsons and Orrin are no 
good in a row. You’ll be collared sure as a 
gun, De Vitre.” 

“Oh, you’re a beastly funk!” The 
speaker was already hidden by the fog. 

“ Hang it all,” said McTurk. “ It’s about 
the first time we’ve ever tried a cattle-lift 
at the Coll. Let’s-” 



IS4 LAND AND SEA TALES 

“Not much,” said Corkran firmly; “keep 
your eye on your Uncle.” His word was 
law in these matters, for experience had 
taught them that if they manoeuvred with¬ 
out Corkran they fell into trouble. 

“You’re wrathy because you didn’t think 
of it first,” said Beetle. Corkran kicked him 
thrice calmly, neither he nor Beetle changing 
a muscle the while. 

! “No, I ain’t; but it isn’t stalky enough for 

_ ff 

me. 

“Stalky,” in their school vocabulary, 
meant clever, well-considered and wily, as 
applied to plans of action; and “stalkiness” 
was the one virtue Corkran toiled after. 

“’Same thing,” said McTurk. “You 
think you’re the only stalky chap in the 
Coll.” 

Corkran kicked him as he had kicked 
Beetle; and even as Beetle, McTurk took 
not the faintest notice. By the etiquette of 
their friendship, this was no more than a 
formal notice of dissent from a proposition. 

“They haven’t thrown out any pickets,” 
Corkran went on (That school prepared boys 
for the Army). “You ought to do that— 
even for apples. Toowey’s farmyard may 
be full of farm-chaps.” 


‘‘STALKY’’ 


iSS 

“ ’Twasn’t last week,” said Beetle, “when 
we smoked in that cartshed place. It’s a 
mile from any house, too.” 

Up went one of Corkran’s light eyebrows. 
“Oh, Beetle, I am so tired o’ kickin’ you! 
Does that mean it’s empty now? They 
ought to have sent a fellow ahead to look. 
They’re simply bound to be collared. An’ 
where’ll they bunk to if they have to run for 
it .f* Parsons has only been here two terms. 
He don’t know the lie of the country. 
Orrin’s a fat ass, an’ Howlett bunks from a 
guv’nor” [vernacular for any native of 
Devon engaged in agricultural pursuits] 
“as far as he can see any. De Vitre’s the 
only decent chap in the lot, an’—an’ I put 
him up to usin’ Toowey’s farmyard.” 

“Well, keep your hair on,” said Beetle. 
“What are we going to do ^ It’s hefty damp 
here.” 

“Let’s think a bit.” Corkran whistled 
between his teeth and presently broke into 
a swift, short double-shuffle. “We’ll go 
straight up the hill and see what happens to 
’em. Cut across the fields; an’ we’ll lie up 
in the hedge where the lane comes in by the 
barn—where we found that dead hedgehog 
last term. Come on!” 


iS6 LAND AND SEA TALES 

He scrambled over the earth bank and 
dropped onto the rain-soaked plough. It 
was a steep slope to the brow of the hill 
where Toowey’s barns stood. The boys 
took no account of stiles or foot-paths, cross¬ 
ing field after field diagonally, and where 
they found a hedge, bursting through it like 
beagles. The lane lay on their right flank, 
and they heard much lowing and shouting 
in that direction. 

‘‘Well, if De Vitre isn’t collared,” said 
McTurk, kicking off a few pounds of loam 
against a gate-post, “he jolly well ought to 
be.” 

“We’ll get collared, too, if you go on with 
your nose up like that. Duck, you ass, and 
stalk along under the hedge. We can get 
quite close up to the barn,” said Corkran. 
“There’s no sense in not doin’ a thing 
stalkily while you’re about it.” 

They wriggled into the top of an old hol¬ 
low double hedge less than thirty yards from 
the big black timbered barn with its square 
outbuildings. Their ten-minutes’ climb had 
lifted them a couple of hundred feet above 
the Burrows. As the mists parted here and 
there, they could see its great triangle of 
sodden green, tipped with yellow sand- 


‘‘STALKY’’ 


157 


dunes and fringed with white foam, laid out 
like a blurred map below. The surge along 
the Pebble Ridge made a background to the 
wild noises in the lane. 

“What did I tell you?” said Corkran, 
peering through the stems of the quickset 
which commanded a view of the farmyard. 
“Three farm-chaps—getting out dung— 
with pitchforks. It’s too late to head off 
De Vitre. We’d be collared if we showed 
up. Besides, they’ve heard ’em. They 
couldn’t help hearing. What asses!” 

The natives, brandishing their weapons, 
talked together, using many times the word 
“Colleger.” As the tumult swelled, they 
disappeared into various pens and byres. 
The first of the cattle trotted up to the 
yard-gate, and De Vitre felicitated his 
band. 

“That’s all right,” he shouted. “Oh, 
won’t old Vidley be wild! Open the gate, 
Orrin, an’ whack ’em through. They’re 
pretty warm.” 

“So’ll you be in a minute,” muttered 
McTurk as the raiders hurried into the yard 
behind the cattle. They heard a shout of 
triumph, shrill yells of despair; saw one 
Devonian guarding the gate with a pitch- 



iS8 LAND AND SEA TALES 

fork, while the others, alas! captured all four 
boys. 

‘^Of all the infernal, idiotic, lower-second 
asses!” said Corkran. “They haven’t even 
taken off their house-caps.” These dainty 
confections of primary colours were not is¬ 
sued, as some believe, to encourage House- 
pride or esprit-de-corps, but for purposes of 
identification from afar, should the wearer 
break bounds or laws. That is why, in time of 
war, any one but an idiot wore his inside out. 

“Aie! Yeou young rascals. We’ve got 
’e! Whutt be doin’ to Muster Vidley’s 
bullocks.?” 

“Oh, we found ’em,” said De Vitre, who 
bore himself gallantly in defeat. “Would 
you like ’em.?” 

“Found ’em! They bullocks drove like 
that—all heavin’ an’ penkin’ an’ hotted! 
Oh! Shameful. Yeou’ve nigh to killed the 
cows—lat alone stealin’ ’em. They sends 
pore boys to jail for half o’ this.” 

“That’s a lie,” said Beetle to McTurk, 
turning on the wet grass. 

“I know; but they always say it. ’Mem¬ 
ber when they collared us at the Monkey 
Farm that Sunday, with the apples in your 
topper.?” 




‘‘STALKY’’ 


IS9 

“ My Aunt! They’re goin’ to lock ’em up 
an’ send for Vidley,” Corkran whispered, as 
one of the captors hurried downhill in the 
direction of Appledore, and the prisoners 
were led into the barn. 

“ But they haven’t taken their names and 
numbers, anyhow,” said Corkran, who had 
fallen into the hands of the enemy more than 
once. 

“But they’re bottled! Rather sickly for 
De Vitre,” said Beetle. “It’s one lickin’ 
anyhow, even if Vidley don’t hammer 
him. The Head’s rather hot about gate- 
liftin’, and poachin’, an’ all that sort of 
thing. He won’t care for cattle-liftin’ 
much.” 

“It’s awfully bad for cows, too, to run ’em 
about in milk,” said McTurk, lifting one 
knee from a sodden primrose-tuft. “ What’s 
the next move. Corky.?” 

“We’ll get into the old cartshed where we 
smoked. It’s next to the barn. We can 
cut across over while they’re inside and 
climb in through the window.” 

“S’pose we’re collared?” said Beetle, 
cramming his house-cap into his pocket. 
Caps may tumble off, so one goes into action 
bare-headed. 


i6o LAND AND SEA TALES 


‘‘That’s just it. They’d never dream of 
any more chaps walkin’ bung into the trap. 
Besides, we can get out through the roof if 
they spot us. Keep your eye on your Uncle. 
Come on,” said Corkran. 

A swift dash carried them to a huge clump 
of nettles, beneath the unglazed back win¬ 
dow of the cartshed. Its open front, of 
course, gave on to the barnyard. 

They scrambled through, dropped among 
the carts, and climbed up into the rudely 
boarded upper floor that they had dis¬ 
covered a week before when in search of 
retirement. It covered a half of the building 
and ended in darkness at the barn wall. 
The roof-tiles were broken and displaced. 
Through the chinks they commanded a 
clear view of the barnyard, half filled with 
disconsolate cattle, steaming sadly in the 
rain. 

“You see,” said Corkran, always careful 
to secure his line of retreat, “if they bottle 
us up here, we can squeeze out between 
these rafters, slide down the roof, an’ bunk. 
They couldn’t even get out through the 
window. They’d have to run right round 
the barn. Now are you satisfied, you bur- 
bler.?” 


“STALKY” i6i 

“Huh! You only said that to make 
quite sure yourself,” Beetle retorted. 

“If the boards weren’t all loose, I’d kick 
you,” growled Corkran. ‘‘ ’No sense gettin’ 
into a place you can’t get out of. Shut up 
and listen.” 

A murmur of voices reached them from 
the end of the attic. McTurk tiptoed 
thither with caution. 

“ Hi! It leads through'into the barn. You 
can get through. Come along!” He fin¬ 
gered the boarded wall. 

“What’s the other side.^” said Corkran 
the cautious. 

“Hay, you idiot.” They heard his boot- 
heels click on wood, and he had gone. 

At some time or other sheep must have 
been folded in the cartshed, and an inventive 
farm-hand, sooner than take the hay round, 
had displaced a board in the barn-side to 
thrust fodder through. It was in no sense 
a lawful path, but twelve inches in the 
square is all that any boy needs. 

“Look here!” said Beetle, as they waited 
for McTurk’s return. “The cattle are 
coming in out of the wet.” 

A brown, hairy back showed some three 
feet below the half-floor, as one by one the 


i 62 land and sea tales 


cattle shouldered in for shelter among the 
carts below, filling the shed with their sweet 
breath. 

‘‘That blocks our way out, unless we get 
out by the roof, an’ that’s rather too much 
of a drop, unless we have to,” said Corkran. 
“They’re all bung in front of the window, 
too. What a day we’re havin’!” 

“Corkran! Beetle!” McTurk’s whisper 
shook with delight. “You can see ’em; 
I’ve seen ’em. They’re in a blue funk in the 
barn, an’ the two clods are makin’ fun of 
’em—horrid. Orrin’s tryin’ to bribe ’em 
an’ Parsons is nearly blubbin’. Come an’ 
look! I’m in the hayloft. Get through the 
hole. Don’t make a row. Beetle.” 

Lithely they wriggled between the dis¬ 
placed boards into the hay and crawled to 
the edge of the loft. Three years’ skirmish¬ 
ing against a hard and unsympathetic peas¬ 
antry had taught them the elements of 
strategy. For tactics they looked to Cork¬ 
ran; but even Beetle, notoriously absent- 
minded, held a lock of hay before his head 
as he crawled. There was no haste, no be¬ 
traying giggle, no squeak of excitement. 
They had learned, by stripes, the unwisdom 
of these things. But the conference by a 


‘‘STALKY’’ 


163 

root-cutter on the barn floor was deep in its 
own affairs; De Vitre’s party promising, en¬ 
treating, and cajoling, while the natives 
laughed like Inquisitors. 

“Wait till Muster Vidley an’ Muster 
Toowey—yis, an’ the policemen come,” 
was their only answer. “’Tis about time 
to go to milkin’. What’ull us do.?’” 

“ Yeou go milk, Tom, an’ I’ll stay long o’ 
the young gentlemen,” said the bigger of 
the two, who answered to the name of 
Abraham. “Muster Toowey, he’m laike 
to charge yeou for usin’ his yard so free. 
Iss fai! Yeou’ll be wopped proper. ’Rack- 
on yeou’ll be askin’ for junkets to set in 
this week o’ Sundays to come. But Muster 
Vidley, he’ll give ’ee the best leatherin’ of 
all. He’m passionful, I tal ’ee.” 

Tom stumped out to milk. The barn 
doors closed behind him, and in the fading 
light a great gloom fell on all but Abraham, 
who discoursed eloquently on Mr. Vidley, his 
temper and strong arm. 

Corkran turned in the hay and retreated 
to the attic, followed by his army. 

“ No good,” was his verdict. “ I’m afraid 
it’s all up with ’em. We’d better get out.” 

“Yes, but look at these beastly cows,” said 


i 64 land and sea TALES 

McTurk, spitting on to a heifer’s back. 
‘‘It’ll take us a week to shove ’em away 
from the window, and that brute Tom’ll 
hear us. He’s just across the yard, 
milkin’.” 

“Tweak ’em, then,” said Corkran. 
“Hang it. I’m sorry to have to go, though. 
If we could get that other beast out of the 
barn for a minute we might make a rescue. 
Well, it’s no good. Tweakons!” 

He drew forth a slim, well-worn home¬ 
made catapult—the “tweaker” of those 
days—slipped a buckshot into its supple 
chamois leather pouch, and pulled to the full 
stretch of the elastic. The others followed 
his example. They only wished to get the 
cattle out of their way, but seeing the backs 
so near, they deemed it their duty each to 
choose his bird and to let fly with all their 
strength. 

They were not prepared in the least for 
what followed. Three bullocks, trying to 
wheel amid six close-pressed companions, 
not to mention three calves, several carts, 
and all the lumber of a general-utility shed, 
do not turn end-for-end without confusion. 
It was lucky for the boys that they stood a 
little back on the floor, because one horned 



‘‘STALKY’^ 


i6s 

head, tossed in pain, flung up a loose board 
at the edge, and it came down lancewise on 
an amazed back. Another victim floun¬ 
dered bodily across the shafts of a decrepit 
gig, smashing these and oversetting the 
wheels. That was more than enough for the 
nerves of the assembly. With wild bellow- 
ings and a good dealof left-and-right butting, 
they dashed into the barnyard, tails on end, 
and began a fine free fight on the midden. 
The last cow out hooked down an old set of 
harness; it flapped over one eye and trailed 
behind her. When a companion trod on 
it, which happened every few seconds, she 
naturally fell on her knees; and, being a 
Burrows cow, with the interests of her calf 
at heart, attacked the first passer-by. 
Half-awed, but wholly delighted, the boys 
watched the outburst. It was in full flower 
before they even dreamed of a second shot. 
Tom came out from a byre with a pitchfork, 
to be chased in again by the harnessed cow. 
A bullock floundered on the muck-heap, 
fell, rose and bedded himself to the belly, 
helpless and bellowing. The others took 
great interest in him. 

Corkran, through the roof, scientifically 
‘Tweaked’’ a frisky heifer on the nose, and 


i66 LAND AND SEA TALES 


it is no exaggeration to say that she danced 
on her hind legs for half a minute. 

‘‘Abram! Oh, Abram! They’m be¬ 
witched. They’m ragin’. ’Tes the milk 
fever. They’ve been drove mad. Oh, 
Abram! They’ll horn the bullock! They’ll 
horn me ! Abram!” 

“Bide till I lock the door,” quoth Abra¬ 
ham, faithful to his trust. They heard him 
padlock the barn door; saw him come out 
with yet another pitchfork. A bullock 
lowered his head, Abraham ran to the near¬ 
est pig-pen, where loud squeakings told that 
he had disturbed the peace of a large 
family. 

“Beetle,” snapped Corkran. “Go in an’ 
get those asses out. Quick! We’ll keep 
the cows happy.” 

A people sitting in darkness and the shad¬ 
ow of monumental lickings, too depressed 
to be angry with De Vitre, heard a voice 
from on high saying, “Come up here! 
Come on! Come up! There’s a way out.” 

They shinned up the loft-stanchions with¬ 
out a word; found a boot-heel which they 
were bidden to take for guide, and squeezed 
desperately through a hole in darkness, to 
be hauled out by Corkran. 


‘‘STALKY” 167 

“ Have you got your caps ? Did you give 
^em your names and numbers?” 

“Yes. No.” 

“That’s all right. Drop down here. 
Don’t stop to jaw. Over the cart—through 
that window, and bunk! Get out 

De Vitre needed no more. They heard 
him squeak as he dropped among the nettles, 
and through the roof-chinks they watched 
four slight figures disappear into the rain. 
Tom and Abraham, from byre and pig-pen, 
exhorted the cattle to keep quiet. 

“ By gum 1 ” said Beetle; “ that was stalky. 
How did you think of it?” 

“It was the only thing to do. Anybody 
could have seen that.” 

“Hadn’t we better bunk, too, now?’^ 
said McTurk uneasily. 

“Why? We'It all right. We haven’t done 
anything. I want to hear what old Vidley 
will say. Stop tweakin’, Turkey. Let ’em 
cool off. Golly! how that heifer danced! 
I swear I didn’t know cows could be so 
lively. We’re only just in time.” 

“My Hat! Here's Vidley—and Too- 
wey,” said Beetle, as the two farmers strode 
into the yard. 

“Gloats! oh, gloats! Fids! oh, fids! 



i68 LAND AND SEA TALES 


Hefty fids and gloats to us!” said Corkran. 

These words, in their vocabulary, ex¬ 
pressed the supreme of delight. ^'Gloats” 
implied more or less of personal triumph, 
^‘fids” was felicity in the abstract, and the 
boys were tasting both that day. Last joy 
of all, they had had the pleasure of Mr. 
Vidley’s acquaintance, albeit he did not love 
them. Toowey was more of a stranger, his 
orchards lying over-near to the public road. 

Tom and Abraham together told a tale of 
stolen cattle maddened by overdriving; of 
cows sure to die in calving, and of milk that 
would never return; that made Mr. Vidley 
swear for three consecutive minutes in the 
speech of north Devon. 

“’Tes tu bad. ’Tes tu bad,” said Too¬ 
wey, consolingly; ‘‘let’s ’ope they ’aven’t 
took no great ’arm. They be wonderful 
wild, though.” 

“’Tes all well for yeou, Toowey, that sells 
them dom Collegers seventy quart a week.” 

“Eighty,” Toowey replied, with the meek 
triumph of one who has underbidden his 
neighbour on public tender; “but that’s no 
odds to me. Yeou’m free to leather ’em 
saame as if they was yeour own sons. On 
iny barn-floor shall ’ee leather ’em.” 


‘‘STALKY’’ 169 

“Generous old pig!” said Beetle. “De 
Vitre ought to have stayed for this.” 

“They’m all safe an’ to rights,” said the 
officious Abraham, producing the key. 
“ Rackon us’ll come in an’ hold ’em for yeou. 
Hey! The cows are fair ragin’ still. Us’ll 
have to run for it.” 

The barn being next to the shed, the boys 
could not see that stately entry. But they 
heard. 

“Gone an’ hided in the hay. Aie! 
They’m proper afraid,” cried Abraham. 

“Rout un out! Rout un out!” roared 
Vidley, rattling a stick impatiently on the 
root-cutter. 

“Oh, my Aunt!” said Corkran, standing 
on one foot. 

“Shut the door. Shut the door, I tal ’ee. 
Rackon us can find un in the dark. Us don’t 
want un boltin’ like rabbits under our 
elbows.” The big barn door closed with a 
clang. 

“My Gum!” said Corkran, which was 
always his War oath in time of action. He 
dropped down and was gone for perhaps 
twenty seconds. 

“And that's all right,” he said, returning 
at a gentle saunter. 


170 LAND AND SEA TALES 

‘"Hwatt?” McTurk almost shrieked, for 
Corkran, in the shed below, waved a large 
key. 

‘‘Stalks! Frabjous Stalks! Bottled’em! 
all four!” was the reply, and Beetle fell on 
his bosom. “Yiss. They’m so’s to say, 
like, locked up. If you’re goin’ to laugh. 
Beetle, I shall have to kick you again.” 

“But I must!” Beetle was blackening 
with suppressed mirth. 

“You won’t do it here, then.” He 
thrust the already limp Beetle through the 
cartshed window. It sobered him; one can¬ 
not laugh on a bed of nettles. Then Cork¬ 
ran stepped on his prostrate carcass, and 
McTurk followed, just as Beetle would have 
risen; so he was upset, and the nettles 
painted on his cheek a likeness of hideous 
eruptions. 

“’Thought that ’ud cure you,” said Cork¬ 
ran, with a sniff. 

Beetle rubbed his face desperately with 
dock-leaves, and said nothing. All desire to 
laugh had gone from him. They entered 
the lane. 

Then a clamour broke from the barn—a 
compound noise of horse-like kicks, shaking 
of door-panels, and fivefold yells. 



‘‘STALKY’’ 171 

“They’ve found it out,” said Corkran. 
“How strange!” He sniffed again. 

“Let ’em,” said Beetle. “No one can 
hear ’em. Come on up to Coll.” 

“What a brute you are, Beetle! You 
only think of your beastly self. Those cows 
want milkin’. Poor dears! Hear ’em low,” 
said McTurk. 

“Go back and milk ’em yourself, then.” 
Beetle danced with pain. “We shall miss 
call-over, hangin’ about like this; an’ I’ve 
got two black marks this week already.” 

“Then you’ll have fatigue-drill on Mon¬ 
day,” said Corkran. “Come to think of it, 
I’ve got two black marks aussi. Hm! 
This is serious. This is hefty serious.” 

“I told you,” said Beetle, with vindictive 
triumph. “An’ we want to go out after 
that hawk’s nest on Monday. We shall 
be swottin’ dum-bells, though. All your 
fault. If we’d bunked with De Vitre at 
first-” 

Corkran paused between the hedgerows. 
“Hold on a shake an’ don’t burble. Keep 
your eye on Uncle. Do you know, I believe 
someone’s shut up in that barn. I think we 
ought to go and see.” 

“Don’t be a giddy idiot. Come on up to 



172 LAND AND SEA TALES 

Coll.” But Corkran took no notice of Beetle. 

He retraced his steps to the head of the 
lane, and, lifting up his voice, cried as in 
bewilderment, “ Hullo Who’s there.? 
What’s that row about? Who are you?” 

“Oh, Peter!” said Beetle, skipping, and 
forgetting his anguish in this new develop¬ 
ment. 

“Hoi! Hoi! ’Ere! Let us out!” The 
answers came muffled and hollow from the 
black bulk of the barn, with renewed thun¬ 
ders on the door. 

“Now play up,” said Corkran. “Turkey, 
you keep the cows busy. ’Member that 
we’ve just discovered ’em. We don’t know 
anything. Be polite. Beetle.” 

They picked their way over the muck and 
held speech through a crack by the door- 
hinge. Three more genuinely surprised boys 
the steady rain never fell upon. And they 
were so difficult to enlighten. They had to 
be told again and again by the captives 
within. 

“We’ve been ’ere for hours an’ hours.” 
That was Toowey. “An’ the cows to milk, 
an’ all.” That was Vidley. “The door she 
blewed against us an’ jammed herself.” 
That was Abraham. 


“STALKY” 


173 


“Yes, we can see that. It’s jammed on 
this side,” said Corkran. ‘‘How careless 
you chaps are!” 

“Oppenun. Oppen un. Bash her oppen 
with a rock, young gen’elmen! The cows 
are milk-heated an’ ragin’. Haven’t you 
boys no sense?” 

Seeing that McTurk from time to time 
tweaked the cattle into renewed caperings, 
it was quite possible that the boys had some 
knowledge of a sort. But Mr. Vidley was 
rude. They told him so through the door, 
professing only now to recognize his voice. 

“Humour un if ’e can. I paid seven-an’- 
six for the padlock,” said Toowey. “Niver 
mind him, ’Tes only old Vidley.” 

“Be yeou gwaine to stay a prisoneer an’ 
captive for the sake of a lock, Toowey? 
I’m shaamed of ’ee. Rowt un oppen, 
young gen’elmen! ’Twas a God’s own 
mercy yeou heard us. Toowey, yeou’m a 
horned miser.” 

“ It’ll be a long job,” said Corkran. “ Look 
here. It’s near our call-over. If we stay 
to help you we’ll miss it. We’ve come miles 
out of our way already—after you.” 

“Tell' yeour master, then, what keeped 
’ee—an arrand o’ mercy, laike. I’ll tal un 



174 land and sea TALES 

tu when I bring the milk to-morrow/’ said 
Toowey. 

‘‘That’s no good,” said Corkran; “we 
may be licked twice over by then. You’ll 
have to give us a letter.” McTurk, backed 
against the barn-wall, was firing steadily 
and accurately into the brown of the herd. 

“ Yiss, yiss. Come down to my house. My 
missus shall write ’ee a beauty, young 
gen’elmen. She makes out the bills. I’ll 
give ’ee just such a letter o’ racommenda- 
tion as I’d give to my own son, if only yeou 
can humour the lock!” 

“Niver mind the lock,” Vidley wailed. 
“Let me get to me pore cows, ’fore they’m 
dead.” 

They went to work with ostentatious 
rattlings and wrenchings, and a good deal 
of the by-play that Corkran always loved. 
At last—the noise of unlocking was covered 
by some fancy hammering with a young 
boulder—the door swung open and the 
captives marched out. 

“Hurry up. Mister Toowey,” said Cork¬ 
ran; “we ought to be getting back. Will 
you give us that note, please.^” 

“Some of yeou young gentlemen was 
drivin’ my cattle off the Burrowses,” said 


“STALKY” 


I 7 S 

Vidley. “I give Ye fair warnin’, I’ll tell 
yeour masters. I know yeou!” He glared 
at Corkran with malignant recognition. 

McTurk looked him over from head to 
foot. “Oh, it’s only old Vidley. Drunk 
again, I suppose. Well, we can’t help that. 
Come on. Mister Toowey. We’ll go to your 
house.” 

“Drunk, am li I’ll drunk ’ee! How do 
I know yeou bain’t the same lot.^ Abram, 
did ’ee take their names an’ numbers.?” 

“What is he ravin’ about.?” said Beetle. 
“Can’t you see that if we’d taken your 
beastly cattle we shouldn’t be hanging 
round your beastly barn. ’Pon my Sam, you 
Burrows guv’nors haven’t any sense-” 

“Let alone gratitude,” said Corkran. “I 
suppose he was drunk, Mister Toowey; 
an’ you locked him in the barn to get sober. 
Shockin’! Oh, shockin’!” 

Vidley denied the charge in language that 
the boys’ mothers would have wept to hear. 

“Well, go and look after your cows, 
then,” said McTurk. “Don’t stand there 
cursin’ us because we’ve been kind enough 
to help you out of a scrape. Why on earth 
weren’t your cows milked before.? Yourt 
no farmer. It’s long past milkin’. No 



176 LAND AND SEA TALES 

wonder theyTe half crazy. Disreputable 
old bog-trotter, you are. Brush your hair, 
sir. ... I beg your pardon. Mister 
Toowey. ’Hope we’re not keeping you.” 

They left Vidley dancing on the muck- 
heap, amid the cows, and devoted them¬ 
selves to propitiating Mr. Toowey on their 
way to his house. Exercise had made them 
hungry; hunger is the mother of good man¬ 
ners; and they won golden opinions from 
Mrs. Toowey. 

* * * 

“Three-quarters of an hour late for Call- 
over, and fifteen minutes late for Lock-up,” 
said Foxy, the school Sergeant, crisply. He 
was waiting for them at the head of the 
corridor. “Report to your housemaster, 
please—an’ a nice mess you’re in, young 
gentlemen.” 

“Quite right. Foxy. Strict attention to 
dooty does it,” said Corkran. “Now where, 
if we asked you, would you say that' his 
honour Mister Prout might, at this moment 
of time, be found prouting—eh.f^” 

“In ’is study—as usual. Mister Corkran. 
He took Call-over.” 

“Hurrah! Luck’s with us all the way. 



‘‘STALKY’’ 177 

Don’t blub, Foxy. I’m afraid you don’t 
catch us this time.” 

“We went up to change, sir, before cornin’ 
to you. That made us a little late, sir. We 
weren’t really very late. We were detained 
—by a-” 

“An errand of mercy,” said Beetle, and 
they laid Mrs. Toowey’s laboriously written 
note before him. “We thought you’d pre¬ 
fer a letter, sir. Toowey got himself locked 
into a barn, and we heard him shouting—it’s 
Toowey who brings the Coll, milk, sir—and 
we went to let him out.” 

“There were ever so many cows waiting 
to be milked,” said McTurk; “and of course, 
he couldn’t get at them, sir. They said 
the door had jammed. There’s his note, 

• if 

sir. 

Mr. Prout read it over thrice. It was per¬ 
fectly unimpeachable; but it said nothing of 
a large tea supplied by Mrs. Toowey. 

“Well, I don’t like your getting mixed up 
with farmers and potwallopers. Of course 
you will not pay any more—er—visits to the 
Tooweys,” said he. 

“Of course not, sir. It was really on 






178 LAND AND SEA TALES 

account of the cows, sir,” replied McTurk, 
glowing with philanthropy. 

‘‘And you came straight back?” 

“We ran nearly all the way from the 
Cattlegate,” said Corkran, carefully de¬ 
veloping the unessential. “ That’s one mile, 
sir. Of course, we had to get the note from 
Toowey first.” 

“But it was because we went to change— 
we were rather wet, sir—that we were really 
late. After we’d reported ourselves to the 
Sergeant, sir, and he knew we were in Coll., 
we didn’t like to come to your study all 
dirty.” Sweeter than honey was the voice 
of Beetle. 

“Very good. Don’t let it happen again.” 
Their housemaster learned to know them 
better in later years. 

They entered—not to say swaggered— 
into Number Nine form-room, where De 
Vitre, Orrin, Parsons, and Howlett, before 
the fire, were still telling their adventures 
to admiring associates. The four rose as 
one boy. 

“What happened to you? We just saved 
Call-over. Did you stay on? Tell us! 
Tell us!” 

The three smiled pensively. They were 





“STALKY” 179 

not distinguished for telling more than was 
necessary. 

“Oh, we stayed on a bit and then we 
came away,” said McTurk. “That’s all.” 

“You scab! You might tell a chap any¬ 
how.” 

“’Think so.^ Well, that’s awfully good 
of you, De Vitre. ’Pon my sainted Sam, 
that’s awfully good of you,” said Corkran, 
shouldering into the centre of the warmth 
and toasting one slippered foot before the 
blaze. “So you really think we might tell 
you.?” 

They stared at the coals and shook with 
deep, delicious chuckles. 

“My Hat! We were stalky,” said Mc¬ 
Turk. “I swear we were about as stalky as 
they make ’em. Weren’t we?” 

“It was a frabjous Stalk,” said Beetle. 
“ ’Much too good to tell you brutes, though.” 

The form wriggled under the insult, but 
made no motion to avenge it. After all, 
on De Vitre’s showing, the three had saved 
the raiders from at least a public licking. 

“It wasn’t half bad,” said Corkran. 
“Stalky is the word.” 

“ You were the really stalky one,” said 
McTurk, one contemptuous shoulder turned 


i8o LAND AND SEA TALES 


to a listening world. ‘‘By Gum! you were 
stalky.” 

Corkran accepted the compliment and 
the name together. “Yes,” said he; “keep 
your eye on your Uncle Stalky an’ he’ll 
pull you through.” 

“Well, you needn’t gloat so,” said De 
Vitre, viciously; “you look like a stuffed 
cat.” 

Corkran, henceforth known as Stalky, 
took not the slightest notice, but smiled 
dreamily. 

“My Hat! Yes. Of course,” he mur¬ 
mured. “Your Uncle Stalky—a doocid 
good name. Your Uncle Stalky is no end 
of a stalker. He’s a Great Man. I swear 
he is. De Vitre, you’re an ass—a putrid 
ass.” 

De Vitre would have denied this but for 
the assenting murmurs from Parsons and 
Orrin. 

“You needn’t rub it in, then.” 

“But I do. I does. You are such a 
woppin’ ass. D’you know it.^ Think over 
it a bit at prep. Think it up in bed. Oblige 
me by thinkin’ of it every half hour till 
further notice. Gummy! an ass you 

are! But your Uncle Stalky”—he picked 




“STALKY’’ 


i8r 


up the form-room poker and beat it against 
the mantelpiece—“is a Great Man!” 

“Hear, hear,” said Beetle and McTurk, 
who had fought under that general. 

“Isn’t your Uncle Stalky a great man, 
De Vitre.? Speak the truth, you fat¬ 
headed old impostor.” 

“Yes,” said De Vitre, deserted by all his 
band. “I—I suppose he is.” 

“’Mustn’t suppose. Is he.^” 

“Well, he is.” 

“A Great Man.^” 

“A Great Man. Now won’t you tell us 
said De Vitre pleadingly. 

“Not by a heap,” said ‘‘Stalky” Corkran. 

Therefore the tale has stayed untold till 
to-day. 



THE HOUR OF THE ANGEL' 


S OONER or late—in earnest or in jest— 
(But the stakes are no jest) Ithuriers 
Hour 

Will spring on us, for the first time, the test 
Of our sole unbacked competence and 
power 

Up to the limit of our years and dower 
Of judgment—or beyond. But here we 
have 

Prepared long since our garland or our 
grave. 

For, at that hour, the sum of all our past. 
Act, habit, thought, and passion, shall be 
cast 

In one addition, be it more or less. 

And as that reading runs so shall we do; 
Meeting, astounded, victory at the last. 
Or, first and last, our own unworthiness. 
And none can change us though they die to 
save! 

^Ithuriel was that Archangel whose spear had the magic property 
of showing everyone exactly and truthfully what he was. 

182 






THE BURNING OF THE 
“SARAH SANDS” 





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THE BURNING OF THE 
“SARAH SANDS” 


Men have sailed the seas for so many years, and have 
there done such amazing things in the face of danger, 
difficulty and death, that no one tale of heroism exists 
which cannot he equalled by at least scores of others. 
But since the behaviour of bodies of untried men under 
trying circumstances is always interesting, and since I 
have been put in possession of some facts not very gener¬ 
ally known, I am trying to tell again the old story of 
the Sarah Sands, as an example of long-drawn-out and 
undefeatable courage and cool-headedness. 

S HE was a small fourmasted, iron-built 
screw-steamer of eleven hundred tons, 
chartered to take out troops to India. That 
was in 1857, the year of the Indian Mutiny, 
when anything that could sail or steer was 
in great demand; for troops were being 
thrown into the country as fast as circum¬ 
stances allowed—which was not very fast. 

Among the regiments sent out was the 
54th of the Line, now the Second Battalion 
of the Dorset Regiment—a good corps, 
about a hundred years old, with a very fair 

185 



186 LAND AND SEA TALES 


record of service, but in no special way 
differing, so far as one could see, from 
many other regiments. It was despatched 
in three ships. The Head-quarters—that is 
to say, the Lieutenant-Colonel, the Regi¬ 
mental books, pay-chest. Band and Colours, 
which last represent the very soul of a 
Battalion—and some fourteen officers, three 
hundred and fifty-four rank and file, and 
perhaps a dozen women, left Portsmouth on 
the 15th of August all packed tight in the 
Sarah Sands, 

Her crew, with the exception of the engi¬ 
neers and firemen, seem to have been for¬ 
eigners and pier-head jumpers picked up 
at the last minute. They turned out bad, 
lazy and insubordinate. 

The accommodation for the troops was 
generously described as ‘‘inferior,’^ and 
what men called “inferior” in 1857 would 
now be called unspeakable. Nor, in spite 
of the urgent need, was there any great 
hurry about the Sarah Sands, She took 
two long months to reach Capetown, and 
she stayed there five days to coal, leaving 
on the 20th of October. By this time, the 
crew were all but openly mutinous, and 
the troops, who must have picked up a little 




THE ‘^SARAH SANDS’’ 187 

seamanship, had to work the ship out of 
harbour. 

On the 7th of November, nearly three 
weeks later, a squall struck her and carried 
away her foremast; and it is to be presumed 
that the troops turned to and cleared away 
the wreckage. On the nth of November 
the real trouble began, for, in the afternoon 
of that day, ninety days out from Ports¬ 
mouth, a party of soldiers working in the 
hold saw smoke coming up from the after¬ 
hatch. They were then, maybe, within a 
thousand miles of the Island of Mauritius, in 
half a gale and a sea full of sharks. 

Captain Castles, the master, promptly 
lowered and provisioned the boats; got 
them over-side with some difficulty and put 
the women into them. Some of the sailors 
—the engineers, the firemen and a few others 
behaved well—jumped into the long-boat, 
lowered it and kept well away from the 
ship. They knew she carried two maga¬ 
zines full of cartridges, and were taking no 
chances. 

The troops, on the other hand, did not 
make any fuss, but under their officers’ 
orders cleared out the starboard or right- 
hand magazine, while volunteers tried to 


i88 LAND AND SEA TALES 


save the Regimental Colours. These stood 
at the end of the saloon, probably clamped 
against the partition behind the Captain’s 
chair, and the saloon was full of smoke. 
Two lieutenants made a dash thither but 
were nearly suffocated. A ship’s quarter¬ 
master—Richard Richmond was his name 
—put a wet cloth over his face, managed to 
tear down the Colours, and then fainted. 
A private—and his name was W. Wiles— 
dragged out both Richmond and the Col¬ 
ours, and the two men dropped senseless on 
the deck while the troops cheered. That, 
at least, was a good beginning; for, as I have 
said, the Colours are the soul of every body 
of men who fight or work under them. 

The saloon must have been one of the 
narrow, cabin-lined, old-fashioned “cud¬ 
dies,” placed above the screw, and all the 
fire was in the stern of the ship, behind the 
engine-room. It was blazing very close to 
the port or left-hand magazine, and, as an 
explosion there would have blown the 
Sarah Sands out like a squib they called for 
more volunteers, and one of the lieutenants 
who had been choked in the saloon recovered, 
went down first and passed up a barrel of 
ammunition, which was at once hove over- 




THE ‘‘SARAH SANDS’’ 189 

board. After this example, work went on 
with regularity. 

When the men taking out the ammunition 
fainted, as they did fairly often, they pulled 
them up with ropes. Those who did not 
faint, grabbed what explosives they could 
feel or handle in the smother, and brought 
them up, and an official and serene 
quartermaster-sergeant stood on the hatch 
and jotted down the number of barrels 
so retrieved in his notebook, as they were 
thrown into the sea. They pulled out all 
except two barrels which slid from the arms 
of a fainting man—there was a fair amount 
of fainting that evening—and rolled out of 
reach. Besides these, there were another 
couple of barrels of signalling powder for 
the ship’s use; but this the troops did not 
know, and were the more comfortable for 
their ignorance. 

Then the flames broke through the after¬ 
deck, the light attracting shoals of sharks, 
and the mizzen-mast—the farthest aft of all 
the masts—flared up and went over-side 
with a crash. This would have veered the 
stern of the ship-head to the wind, in which 
case the flames must have swept forward; 
but a man with a hatchet—his name is lost 






190 LAND AND SEA TALES 

—ran along the bulwarks and cut the wreck 
clear, while the boat full of women surged 
and rocked at a safe distance, and the sharks 
tried to upset it with their tails. 

A Captain of the 54th—he was a jovial 
soul, and made jokes throughout the strug¬ 
gle—headed a party of men to cut away the 
bridge, the deck-cabins, and everything else 
that was inflammable—this in case of the 
flames sweeping forward again—while a 
provident lieutenant, with some more troops, 
lashed spars and things together for a raft, 
and other gangs pumped water desperately 
on to what was left of the saloon and the 
magazines. 

One record says quaintly: ‘‘It was neces¬ 
sary to make some deviation from the usual 
military evolutions while the flames were in 
progress. The men formed in sections, coun¬ 
termarched round the forward part of the 
ship, which may perhaps be better under¬ 
stood when it is stated that those with their 
faces to the after part where the fire raged 
were on their way to relieve their comrades 
who had been working below. Those pro¬ 
ceeding ‘forward’ were going to recruit 
their exhausted strength and prepare for 
another attack when it came to their turn.” 






THE ‘‘SARAH SANDS” 


191 

No one seemed to have much hopes of 
saving the ship so long as the last of the 
powder was unaccounted for. Indeed, Cap¬ 
tain Castles told an officer of the 54th that 
the game was up, and the officer replied, 
“We’ll fight till we’re driven overboard.” 
It seemed he would be taken at his word, 
for just then the signalling powder and the 
ammunition-casks went up, and the ship 
seen from midships aft looked like one 
floating volcano. 

The cartridges spluttered like crackers, 
and cabin doors and timbers were shot up 
all over the deck, and two or three men were 
hurt. But—this is not in any official record 
—^just after the roar of it, when her stern was 
dipping deadlily, and all believed the Sarah 
Sands was settling for her last lurch, some 
merry jester of the 54th cried, “Lights out,” 
and the jovial captain shouted back, “All 
right! We’ll keep the old woman afloat 
yet.” Not one man of the troops made 
any attempt to get on to the rafts; and 
when they found the ship was still float¬ 
ing they all went back to work double 
tides. 

At this point in the story we come across 
Mr. Frazer, the Scotch engineer, who, like 



192 LAND AND SEA TALES 

most of his countrymen, had been holding 
his trump-card in reserve. He knew the 
Sarah Sands was built with a water-tight 
bulkhead behind the engine-room and the 
coalbunkers; and he proposed to cut through 
the bulkhead and pump on the fire. Also, 
he pointed out that it would be well to re¬ 
move the coal in the bunkers, as the bulk¬ 
head behind was almost red-hot, and the coal 
was catching light. 

So volunteers dropped into the bunkers, 
each man for the minute or two he could 
endure it, and shovelled away the singeing, 
fuming fuel, and other volunteers were low¬ 
ered into the bonfire aft, and when they 
could throw no more water on it they were 
pulled up half roasted. 

Mr. Frazer’s plan saved the ship, though 
every particle of wood in the after part of 
her was destroyed, and a bluish vapour hung 
over the red-hot iron beams and ties, and the 
sea for miles about looked like blood under 
the glare, as they pumped and passed water 
in buckets, flooding the stern, sluicing the 
engine-room bulkhead and damping the coal 
beyond it all through the long night. The 
very sides of the ship were red-hot, so that 
they wondered when her plates would buckle 


THE SARAH SANDS’’ 193 

and wrench out the rivets and let the whole 
affair down to the sharks. 

The foremast had carried away on the 
squall of the 7th of November; the mizzen¬ 
mast, as you know, had gone in the fire; 
the main-mast, though wrapped round with 
wet blankets, was alight, and ever3rthing 
abaft the main-mast was one red furnace. 
There was the constant danger of the ship, 
now broadside on to the heavy seas, falling 
off before the heavy wind, and leading the 
flames forward again. So they hailed the 
boats to tow and hold her head to wind; 
but only the gig obeyed the order. The 
others had all they could do to keep afloat; 
one of them had been swamped, though all 
her people were saved; and as for the long¬ 
boat full of mutinous seamen, she behaved 
infamously. One record says that ‘‘She not 
only held aloof, but consigned the ship and 
all she carried to perdition.” So the Sarah 
Sands fought for her own life alone, with 
the sharks in attendance. 

About three on the morning of the 12th 
of November, pumping, bucketing, sluicing 
and damping, they began to hope that they 
had bested the fire. By nine o’clock they 
saw steam coming up from her insides in- 


194 land and sea TALES 

stead of smoke, and at mid-day they called 
in the boats and took stock of the damage. 
From the mizzen-mast aft there was nothing 
that you could call ship except just the 
mere shell of her. It was all one steaming 
heap of scrap-iron with twenty feet of 
black, greasy water flooding across the bent 
and twisted rods, and in the middle of it all 
four huge water-tanks rolled to and fro, 
thundering against the naked sides. 

Moreover,—this they could not see till 
things had cooled down—the powder ex¬ 
plosions had blown a hole right through her 
port quarter, and every time she rolled the 
sea came in there green. Of the four masts 
only one was left; and the rudder-head 
stuck up all bald, black and horrible among 
the jam of collapsed deck-beams. A photo¬ 
graph of the wreck looks exactly like that 
of a gutted theatre after the flames and the 
firemen have done their worst. 

They spent the whole of the 12th of No¬ 
vember pumping water out as zealously-as 
they had pumped it in. They lashed up the 
loose, charging tanks as soon as they were 
cool enough to touch. They plugged the 
hole at the stern with hammocks, sails, and 
planks, and a sail over all. Then they 




THE ‘‘SARAH SANDS’’ 


195 


rigged up a horizontal bar gripping the 
rudder-head. Six men sat on planks on one 
side and six at the other over the empty pit 
beneath, hauling on to the bar with ropes 
and letting go as they were told. That 
made the best steering-gear that they could 
devise. 

On the 13th of November, still pumping, 
they spread one sail on their solitary mast— 
it was lucky that the Sarah Sands had 
started with four of them—and took advan¬ 
tage of the trade winds to make for Mauri¬ 
tius. Captain Castles, with one chart and 
one compass, lived in a tent where some 
cabins had once been; and at the end of 
twelve more days he sighted land. Their 
average run was about four knots an hour; 
and, it is no wonder that as soon as they 
were off Port Louis, Mauritius, Mr. Frazer, 
the Scotch engineer, wished to start his 
engines and enter port professionally. The 
troops looked down into the black hollow of 
the ship when the shaft made its first revolu¬ 
tion, shaking the hull horribly; and if you 
can realize what it means to be able to see a 
naked screw-shaft at work from the upper 
deck of a liner, you can realize what had 
happened to the Sarah Sands. They waited 


196 LAND AND SEA TALES 

outside Port Louis for the daylight, and 
were nearly dashed to pieces on a coral reef. 
Then the gutted, empty steamer came in 
—very dirty, the men’s clothes so charred 
that they hardly dared to take them off, 
and very hungry; but without having lost 
one single life. Port Louis gave them all a 
public banquet in the market place, and the 
French inhabitants were fascinatingly polite 
as only the French can be. 

But the records say nothing of what befell 
the sailors who “consigned the ship to per¬ 
dition.” One account merely hints that 
“this was no time for retribution”; but the 
troops probably administered their own jus¬ 
tice during the twelve days’ limp to port. 
The men who were berthed aft, the officers 
and the women, lost everything they had; 
and the companies berthed forward lent 
them clothes and canvas to make some sort 
of raiment. 

On the 20th of December they were all 
re-embarked on the Clarendon. It was poor 
accommodation for heroes. She had been 
condemned as a coolie-ship, was full of cen¬ 
tipedes and other animals picked up in the 
Brazil trade; her engines broke down fre¬ 
quently; and her captain died of exposure 



THE ‘‘SARAH SANDS” 


197 


and anxiety during a hurricane. So it was 
the 25th of January before she reached the 
mouth of the Hugh. 

By this time—many of the men probably 
considered this quite as serious as the fire— 
the troops were out of tobacco, and when 
they came across the American ship Hamlet, 
Captain Lecran, lying at Kedgeree on the 
way up the river to Calcutta, the officers 
rowed over to ask if there was any tobacco 
for sale. They told the skipper the history 
of their adventures, and he said: “Well, 
Tm glad youVe come to me, because I have 
some tobacco. How many are you?” 
“Three hundred men,” said the officers. 
Thereupon Captain Lecran got out four 
hundred pounds of best Cavendish as well 
as one thousand Manilla cigars for the 
officers, and refused to take payment on the 
grounds that Americans did not accept any¬ 
thing from shipwrecked people. They 
were not shipwrecked at the time, but evi¬ 
dently they had been shipwrecked quite 
enough for Captain Lecran, because when 
they rowed back a second time and insisted 
on paying, he only gave them grog, “which,” 
says the record, “caused it to be dark when 
we returned to our ship.” After this “our 



198 LAND AND SEA TALES 

band played ‘ Yankee-Doodle/ blue lights 
were burned, the signal-gun fired’’—that 
must have been a lively evening at Ked¬ 
geree—‘^and everything in our power was 
had recourse to so as to convey to our Amer¬ 
ican cousins our appreciation of their kind¬ 
ness.” 

Last of all, the Commander-in-Chief is¬ 
sued a general order to be read at the head 
of every regiment in the Army. He was 
pleased to observe that ‘The behaviour of 
the 54th Regiment was most praiseworthy, 
and by its result must render manifest to 
all the advantage of subordination and strict 
obedience to orders under the most alarming 
and dangerous circumstances in which sol¬ 
diers can be placed.” 

This seems to be the moral of the tale. 





THE LAST LAP 



Where the mired and sulky oxen wait, 
And it looks as though we might wait for 


ever, 

How do we know that the floods abate ? 

There is no change in the current’s brawl¬ 
ing— 

Louder and harsher the freshet scolds; 

Yet we can feel she is falling, falling. 

And the more she threatens the less she 
holds. 

Down to the drift, with no word spoken. 

The wheel-chained wagons slither and 
slue. 

Steady! The back of the worst is broken. 

And—lash your leaders!—we’re through 
—we’re through! 

How do we know, when the port-fog holds us 

Moored and helpless, a mile from the pier. 

And the week-long summer smother enfolds 
us— 

How do we know it is going to clear.? 

199 







200 


LAND AND SEA TALES 


There is no break in the blind-fold weather, 
But, one and another, around the bay. 
The unseen capstans clink together. 

Getting ready to up and away. 

A pennon whimpers—the breeze has found 
us— 

A headsail jumps through the thinning 
haze. 

The whole hull follows, till—broad around 
us— 

The clean-swept ocean says:—‘‘Go your 

I > j 

ways! 


How do we know, when the long fight rages. 
On the old, stale front that we cannot 
shake; 

And it looks as though we were locked for 
ages. 

How do we know they are going to break 
There is no lull in the level firing. 

Nothing has shifted except the sun. 

Yet we can feel they are tiring, tiring. 

Yet we can tell they are ripe to run. 
Something wavers, and, while we wonder. 
Their center trenches are emptying out. 
And, before their useless flanks go under. 
Our guns have pounded retreat to rout! 



THE PARABLE OF BOY JONES 
























THE PARABLE OF BOY JONES 


This tale was written several years before the War, as 
you can see for yourselves. It is founded on fact, and 
it is meant to show that one ought to try to recognize 
facts, even when they are unpleasant and inconveni¬ 
ent* 

T he long shed of the Village Rifle Club 
reeked with the oniony smell of smoke¬ 
less powder, machine-oil, and creosote from 
the stop-butt, as man after man laid himself 
down and fired at the miniature target sixty 
feet away. The Instructor’s voice echoed 
under the corrugated iron roof. 

“Squeeze, Matthews, squeeze! Jerking 
your shoulder won’t help the bullet. . . . 
Gordon, you’re canting your gun to the 
left. . . . Hold your breath when the 

sights come on. . . . Fenwick, was 

that a bull.f^ Then it’s only a fluke, for 
your last at two o’clock was an outer. You 
don’t know where you’re shooting.” 

“I call this monotonous,” said Boy Jones, 
who had been brought by a friend to look at 
the show. “Where does the fun come in?’^ 


203 


204 


LAND AND SEA TALES 


‘‘Would you like to try a shot?’’ the 
Instructor asked. 

“Oh—er—thanks,” said Jones. “I’ve 
shot with a shot-gun, of course, but this”— 
he looked at the miniature rifle—“this 
isn’t like a shot-gun, is it?” 

“Not in the least,” said the Friend. The 
Instructor passed Boy Jones a cartridge. 
The squad ceased firing and stared. Boy 
Jones reddened and fumbled. 

“Hi! The beastly thing has slipped 
somehow!” he cried. The tiny twenty-two 
cartridge had dropped into the magazine- 
slot and stuck there, caught by the rim. 
The muzzle travelled vaguely round the 
horizon. The squad with one accord sat 
down on the dusty cement floor. 

“Lend him a hair-pin,” whispered the 
jobbing gardener. 

“Muzzle up, please,” said the Instructor 
(it was drooping towards the men on the 
floor). “I’ll load for you. Now—keep 
her pointed towards the target—you’re sup¬ 
posed to be firing at two hundred yards. 
Have you set your sights? Never mind, 
I’ll set ’em. Please don’t touch the trigger 
till you shoot.” 

Boy Jones was glistening at the edges as 







THE PARABLE OF BOY JONES 205 

the Instructor swung him in the direction of 
the little targets fifty feet away. ‘^Take a 
fine sight! The bull’s eye should be just 
sitting on the top of the fore-sight,” the 
Instructor cautioned. “Ah!” 

Boy Jones, with a grunt and a jerk of the 
shoulder, pulled the trigger. The right- 
hand window of the shed, six feet above the 
target, starred and cracked. 

The boy who cleans the knives at the 
Vicarage buried his face in his hands; 
Jevons, the bricklayer’s assistant, tied up 
his bootlace; the Fellow of the Royal Geo¬ 
graphical Society looked at the roof; the 
village barber whistled softly. When one is 
twenty-two years old, and weighs twelve- 
stone-eight in hard condition, one does not 
approve of any game that one cannot play 
very well. 

“I call this silly piffle,” said Boy Jones, 
wiping his face. 

“Oh, not so bad as that,” said the In¬ 
structor. “ We’ve all got to begin somehow. 
Try another.?” But Boy Jones was not 
practising any more that afternoon. He 
seemed to need soothing. 

“Come over to the big range,” said the 
Friend. “You’ll see the finished article at 


2 o6 land and sea tales 


work down there. This is only for boys 
and beginners.’’ 

A knot of village lads from twelve to 
sixteen were scuffling for places on the 
shooting-mat as Boy Jones left the shed. 
On his way to the range, across the windy 
Downs, he preserved a silence foreign to his 
sunny nature. Jevons, the bricklayer’s as¬ 
sistant, and the F. R. G. S. trotted past 
him—riffes at the carry. 

‘‘Awkward wind,” said Jevons. “Fish¬ 
tail!” 

“What’s a fishtail.^” said Boy Jones. 

“Oh! It means a fishy, tricky sort of a 
wind,” said the Friend. A shift in the un¬ 
easy north-east breeze brought them the 
far-away sob of a service rifie. 

“For once in your young life,” the Friend 
went on, “you’re going to attend a game 
you do not understand.” 

“If you mean I’m expected to make an 
ass of myself again-” Boy Jones paused. 

“Don’t worry! By this time I fancy 
Jevons will have told the Sergeant all about 
your performance in the shed just now. 
You won’t be pressed to shoot.” 

A long sweep of bare land opened before 
them. The thump of occasional shots 



THE PARABLE OF BOY JONES 207 

grew clearer, and Boy Jones pricked his 
ears. 

“What’s that unholy whine and whop?” 
he asked in a lull of the wind. 

“The whine is the bullet going across the 
valley. The whop is when it hits the target 
—that white shutter thing sliding up and 
down against the hillside. Those men lying 
down yonder are shooting at five hundred 
yards. We’ll look at ’em,” said the Friend. 

“This would make a thundering good 
golf-links,” said Boy Jones, striding over 
the short, clean turf. “Not a bad lie in 
miles of it.” 

“Yes, wouldn’t it?” the Friend replied. 
“It would be even prettier as a croquet- 
lawn or a basket-ball pitch. Just the place 
for a picnic too. Unluckily, it’s a rifle- 
range.” 

Boy Jones looked doubtful, but said 
nothing till they reached the five-hundred- 
yard butt. The Sergeant, on his stomach, 
binoculars to his eye, nodded, but not at the 
visitors. “Where did you sight, Walters?” 
he said. 

“Nine o’clock—edge of the target,” was 
the reply from a fat, blue man in a bowler 
hat, his trousers rucked half-way to his 


208 LAND AND SEA TALES 


knees. ^‘The wind’s rotten bad down 
there!” He pointed towards the stiff¬ 
tailed wind-flags that stuck out at all sorts 
of angles as the eddy round the shoulder 
of the Down caught them. 

‘Xet me try one,” the Sergeant said, and 
reached behind him for a rifle. 

‘‘Hold on!” said the F. R. G. S. “That’s 
Number Six. She throws high.” 

“She’s my pet,” said Jevons, holding out 
his hand for it. “Take Number Nine, 
Sergeant.” 

“Rifles are like bats, you know,” the 
Friend explained. “They differ a lot.” 

The Sergeant sighted. 

“He holds it steady enough,” said Boy 
Jones. 

“He mostly does,” said the Friend. “If 
you watch that white disc come up you’ll 
know it’s a bull.” 

“Not much of one,” said the Sergeant. 
“Too low—too far right. I gave her all 
the allowance I dared, too. That wind’s 
funnelling badly in the valley. Give your 
wind-sight another three degrees, Walters.” 

The fat man’s big fingers delicately ad¬ 
justed the lateral sight. He had been 
firing till then by the light of his trained 


THE PARABLE OF BOY JONES 209 

judgment, but some of the rifles were fitted 
with wind-gauges, and he wished to test 
one. 

‘‘What’s he doing that for?” said Boy 
Jones. 

“You wouldn’t understand,” said the 
Friend. “But take a squint along this 
rifle, and see what a bull looks like at five 
hundred yards. It isn’t loaded, but don’t 
point it at the pit of my stomach.” 

“Dash it all! I didn’t mean to!” said 
Boy Jones. 

“None of ’em mean it,” the Friend re¬ 
plied. “That’s how all the murders are 
done. Don’t play with the bolt. Merely 
look along the sights. It isn’t much of a 
mark, is it?” 

“No, by Jove!” said Jones, and gazed 
with reverence at Walters, who announced 
before the marker had signalled his last 
shot that it was a likely heifer. (Walters 
was a butcher by profession.) A well- 
centred bull it proved to be. 

“Now how the deuce did he do it?” said 
Boy Jones. 

“By practice—first in the shed at two 
hundred yards. We’ve five or six as good 
as him,” said the Friend. “But he’s not 


210 


LAND AND SEA TALES 


much of a snap-shooter when it comes to 
potting at dummy heads and shoulders ex¬ 
posed for five seconds. Jevons is our man 
then.’’ 

‘‘Ah! talking of snap-shooting!” said the 
Sergeant, and—while Jevons fired his seven 
shots—delivered Boy Jones a curious little 
lecture on the advantages of the foggy 
English climate, the value of enclosed land 
for warfare, and the possibilities of well- 
directed small-arm fire wiping up—“spray¬ 
ing down” was his word—artillery, even in 
position. 

“ Well, I’ve got to go on and build houses,” 
said Jevons. “Twenty-six is my score- 
card—sign please. SergeantHe rose, 
dusted his knees, and moved off. His place 
was taken by a dark, cat-footed Coastguard, 
firing for the love of the game. He only 
ran to three cartridges, which he placed— 
magpie, five o’clock; inner, three o’clock; 
and bull. “Cordery don’t take anything 
on trust,” said the Sergeant. “He feels 
his way in to the bull every time. I like it. 
It’s more rational.” 

While the F. R. G. S. was explaining to 
Boy Jones that the rotation of the earth on 
her axis affected a bullet to the extent of one 






THE PARABLE OF BOY JONES 211 

yard in a thousand, a batch of six lads can¬ 
tered over the hill. 

“We’re the new two-hundred-ers,” they 
shouted. 

“I know it,” said the Sergeant. “Pick 
up the cartridge-cases; take my mackintosh 
and bag, and come on down to the two 
hundred range, quietly.” 

There was no need for the last caution. 
The boys picked up the things and swung 
off in couples—scout fashion. 

“They are the survivors,” the Friend ex¬ 
plained, “of the boys you saw just now. 
They’ve passed their miniature rifle tests, 
and are supposed to be fit to fire in the open.” 

“And are they.^” said Boy Jones, edging 
away from the F. R. G. S., who was talk¬ 
ing about “jump” and “flip” in rifle¬ 
shooting. 

“We’ll see,” said the Sergeant. “This 
wind ought to test ’em!” 

Down in the hollow it rushed like a 
boulder-choked river, driving quick clouds 
across the sun: so that one minute, the 
eight-inch Bisley bull leaped forth like a 
headlight, and the next shrunk back into 
the grey-green grass of the butt like an 
engine backing up the line. 



212 LAND AND SEA TALES 


‘‘Look here!” said the Sergeant, as the 
boys dropped into their places at the firing- 
point. “I warn you it’s a three-foot wind 
on the target, and freshening. You’ll get 
no two shots alike. Any boy that thinks he 
won’t do himself justice can wait for a 
better day.” 

Nothing moved except one grin from 
face to face. 

“No,” said the Sergeant, after a pause. 
“I don’t suppose a thunder-storm would 
shift you young birds. Remember what 
I’ve been telling you all this spring. Sight¬ 
ing shots, from the right!” 

They went on one by one, carefully 
imitating the well-observed actions of their 
elders, even to the tapping of the cartridge 
on the rifle-butt. They scowled and grunted 
and compared notes as they set and reset 
their sights. They brought up their rifles 
just as shadow gave place to sun, and, 
holding too long, fired when the cheating 
cloud returned. It was unhappy, cold, 
nose-running, eye-straining work, but they 
enjoyed it passionately. At the end they 
showed up their score-cards; one twenty- 
seven, two twenty-fives, a twenty-four, and 
two twenty-twos. Boy Jones, his hands on 


THE PARABLE OF BOY JONES 213 

his knees, had made no remark from first 
to last. 

“Could I have a shot.^” he began in a 
strangely meek voice. 

But the chilled Sergeant had already 
whistled the marker out of the butt. The 
wind-flags were being collected by the 
youngsters, and, with a tinkle of spent 
cartridge-cases returned to the Sergeant’s 
bag, shooting ended. 

“Not so bad,” said the Sergeant. 

“One of those boys was hump-backed,” 
said Boy Jones, with the healthy animal’s 
horror of deformity. 

“ But his shots aren’t,” said the Sergeant. 
“He was the twenty-seven card. Milli¬ 
gan’s his name.” 

“I should like to have had a shot,” Boy 
Jones repeated. “Just for the fun of the 
thing.” 

“Well, just for the fun of the thing,” the 
Friend suggested, “suppose you fill and 
empty a magazine. Have you got any 
dummies. Sergeant?” 

The Sergeant produced a handful of 
dummy cartridges from his inexhaustible 
bag. 

“How d’you put ’em in.?” said Boy 


214 


LAND AND SEA TALES 


Jones, picking up a cartridge by the bullet 
end with his left hand, and holding the 
rifle with his right. 

^‘Here, Milligan,” the Friend called. 
“Fill and empty this magazine, will you, 
please.^” 

The cripple’s fingers flickered for an in¬ 
stant round the rifle-breech. The dummies 
vanished clicking. He turned towards the 
butt, pausing perhaps a second on each 
aimed shot, ripped them all out again over 
his shoulder.. Mechanically Boy Jones 
caught them as they spun in the air; for he 
was a good fielder. 

“Time, fifteen seconds,” said the Friend. 
“You try now.” Boy Jones shook his 
head. “No, thanks,” he said. “This isn’t 
my day out. That’s called magazine-fire, I 
suppose.” 

“Yes,” said the Sergeant, “but it’s more 
difficult to load in the dark or in a cramped 
position.” 

The boys drew off, larking among them¬ 
selves. The others strolled homewards as 
the wind freshened. Only the Sergeant, 
after a word or two with the marker, struck 
off up the line of firing-butts. 

“There seems to be a lot in it,” said Boy 


THE PARABLE OF BOY JONES 215 

Jones, after a while, to his friend. “But 
you needn’t tell me,” he went on in the 
tone of one ill at ease with himself, “don’t 
tell me that when the hour strikes every 
man in England wouldn’t—er—rally to the 
defence of his country like one man.” 

“And he’d be so useful while he was 
rallying, wouldn’t he.^” said the Friend 
shortly. “Imagine one hundred thousand 
chaps of your kidney introduced to the 
rifle for the first time, all loading and firing 
in your fashion! The hospitals wouldn’t 
hold ’em!” 

“Oh, there’d be time to get the general 
hang of the thing,” said Boy Jones cheerily. 

“When that hour strikes,” the Friend 
replied, “it will already have struck, if you 
understand. There may be a few hours— 
perhaps ten or twelve—there will certainly 
not be more than a day and a night allowed 
us to get ready in.” 

“There will be six months at least,” said 
Boy Jones confidently. 

“Ah, you probably read that in a paper. 
I shouldn’t rely on it, if I were you. It 
won’t be like a county cricket match, date 
settled months in advance. By the way, are 
you playing for your county this season?” 




2i6 land and sea tales 


Boy Jones seemed not to hear the last 
question. He had taken the Friend’s rifle, 
and was idly clicking the bolt. 

‘‘Beg y’ pardon, sir,” said the Marker to 
the Friend in an undertone, “but the 
Sergeant’s tryin’ a gentleman’s new rifle at 
nine hundred, and I’m waiting on for him. 
If you’d like to come into the trench.^”—a 
discreet wink closed the sentence. 

“Thanks awfully. That ’ud be quite in¬ 
teresting,” said Boy Jones. The wind had 
dulled a little; the sun was still strong on the 
golden gorse; the Sergeant’s straight back 
grew smaller and smaller as it moved 
away. 

“You go down this ladder,” said the 
Marker. They reached the raw line of the 
trench beneath the targets, the foot deep in 
the flinty chalk. 

“Yes, sir,” he went on, “here’s where all 
the bullets ought to come. There’s four¬ 
teen thousand of ’em this year, somewhere 
on the premises, but it don’t hinder the 
rabbits from burrowing, just the same. 
They know shooting’s over as well as we do. 
You come here with a shot-gun, and you 
won’t see a single tail; but they don’t put 
’emselves out for a rifle. Look, there’s the 


THE PARABLE OF BOY JONES 217 

Parson!’' He pointed at a bold, black 
rabbit sitting half-way up the butt, who 
loped easily away as the Marker ran up the 
large nine-hundred-yard bull. Boy Jones 
stared at the bullet-splintered frame-work 
of the targets, the chewed edges of the wood¬ 
work, and the significantly loosened earth 
behind them. At last he came down, slowly 
it seemed, out of the sunshine, into the 
chill of the trench. The marker opened an 
old cocoa box, where he kept his paste and 
paper patches. 

“Things get mildewy down here,” he 
explained. “Mr. Warren, our sexton, says 
it’s too like a grave to suit him. But as I 
say, it’s twice as deep and thrice as wide 
as what he makes.” 

“I think it’s rather jolly,” said Boy Jones, 
and looked up at the narrow strip of sky. 
The Marker had quietly lowered the danger 
flag. Something yowled like a cat with her 
tail trod on, and a few fragments of pure 
white chalk crumbled softly into the trench. 
Boy Jones jumped, and flattened himself 
against the inner wall of the trench. “The 
Sergeant is taking a sighting-shot,” said the 
Marker. “He must have hit a flint in the 
grass somewhere. We can’t comb ’em all 


2i8 land and sea tales 


out. The noise you noticed was the nickel 
envelope stripping, sir.’’ 

‘‘But I didn’t hear his gun go off,” said 
Boy Jones. 

“Not at nine hundred, with this wind, 
you wouldn’t,” said the Marker. “Stand 
on one side, please, sir. He’s begun.” 

There was a rap overhead—a pause— 
down came the creaking target, up went the 
marking disc at the end of a long bamboo; 
a paper patch was slapped over the bullet 
hole, and the target slid up again, to be 
greeted with another rap, another, and 
another. The fifth differed in tone. “Here’s 
a curiosity,” said the Marker, pulling down 
the target. “The bullet must have rico- 
chetted short of the butt, and it has key- 
holed, as we say. See!” He pointed to 
an ugly triangular rip and flap on the canvas 
target face. “If that had been flesh and 
blood, now,” he went on genially, “it would 
have been just the same as running a plough 
up you. . . . Now he’s on again!” The 

sixth rap was as thrillingly emphatic as one 
at a spiritualistic seance, but the seventh 
was followed by another yaa-ow of a bullet 
hitting a stone, and a tiny twisted sliver of 
metal fell at Boy Jones’s rigid feet. He 




THE PARABLE OF BOY JONES 219 

touched a'nd dropped it. ‘‘Why, It’s quite 
hot,” he said. 

“That’s due to arrested motion,” said the 
F. R. G. S. “Isn’t it a funking noise, 
though.?” 

A pause of several minutes followed, dur¬ 
ing which they could hear the wind and 
the sea and the creaking of the Marker’s 
braces. 

“He said he’d finish off with a magazine 
full,” the Marker volunteered. “I expect 
he’s waiting for a lull in the wind. Ah! 
here it comes!” 

It came—eleven shots slammed in at 
three-second intervals; a ricochet or two; 
one on the right-hand of the target’s frame¬ 
work, which rang like a bell; a couple that 
hammered the old railway ties just behind 
the bull; and another that kicked a clod into 
the trench, and key-holed up the target. 
The others were various and scattering, but 
all on the butt. 

“Sergeant can do better than that,” 
said the Marker critically, overhauling the 
target. “It was the wind put him off, 
or (he winked once again), or . . . else 

he wished to show somebody something.” 

“I heard ’em all hit,” said Boy Jones. 


220 


LAND AND SEA TALES 


‘‘ But I never heard the gun go off. Awful, 
I call it!’’ 

‘‘Well,” said his friend, “it’s the kind 
of bowling you’ll have to face at forty- 
eight hours’ notice —if you’re lucky.” 

“It’s the key-holing that I bar,” said 
Boy Jones, following his own line of thought. 
The Marker put up his flag and ladder, and 
they climbed out of the trench into the 
sunshine. 

“For pity’s sake, look!” said the Marker, 
and stopped. “Well, well! If I ’adn’t 
seen it, I wouldn’t have credited it. You 
poor little impident fool. The Sergeant 
will be vexed.” 

“What has happened.^” said Boy Jones, 
rather shrilly. 

“He’s killed the Parson, sir!” The 
Marker held up the still kicking body of a 
glossy black rabbit. One side of its head 
was not there. 

“Talk of coincidence!” the Marker went 
on. “I know Sergeant ’ll pretend he aimed 
for it. The poor little fool! Jumpin ’ about 
after his own businesses and thinking he 
was safe; and then to have his head fair 
mashed off him like this Just look at 
him! Well! Well!” 



THE PARABLE OF BOY JONES 221 

It was anything but well with Boy Jones. 
He seemed sick. 

* * * * 

A week later the Friend nearly stepped on 
him in the miniature-rifle shed. He was lying 
at length on the dusty coir matting, his 
trousers rucked half-way to his knees, his 
sights set as for two hundred, deferentially 
• asking Milligan the cripple to stand behind 
him and tell him whether he was canting. 

“No, you aren’t now,” said Milligan 
patronizingly, “but you were.” 


A DEPARTURE 


S INCE first the White Horse Banner 
blew free, 

By Hengist’s horde unfurled, 

Nothing has changed on land or sea 
Of the things that steer the world. 

(As it was when the long-ships scudded 
through the gale 
So it is where the Liners go.) 

Time and Tide, they are both in a tale 
“Woe to the weaker—woe!” 


No charm can bridle the hard-mouthed wind 
Or smooth the fretting swell. 

No gift can alter the grey Sea’s mind, 

But she serves the strong man well. 

(As it is when her uttermost deeps are 
stirred 

So it is where the quicksands show,) 

All the waters have but one word— 

“Woe to the weaker—woe!” 


222 




A DEPARTURE 


223 


The feast is ended, the tales are told, 

The dawn is overdue. 

And we meet at the wharf in the whistling 
cold 

Where the galley waits her crew. 

Out with the torches, they have flared too 
long. 

And bid the harpers go. 

Wind and warfare have but one song— 
‘‘Woe to the weaker—woe!’’ 

Hail to the great oars gathering way. 

As the beach begins to slide! 

Hail to the war-shields’ click and play 
As they lift along our side! 

Hail to the first wave over the bow— 

Slow for the sea-stroke! Slow! 

All the benches are grunting now— 

^^Woe to the weaker — woe!” 










# 


i 


V. : 

B 


THE BOLD ’PRENTICE 






THE BOLD ’PRENTICE 


This story is very much of the same sort as An 
Unqualified Pilotf^ and shows that, when any one is 
really keen on his job, he will generally find some older 
man who is even keener than he, who will give him help 
and instruction that could not he found in a whole 
library of books. Olaf Swansongs book of ^^Road- 
Locos Repair or the Young Driver s Fademecome,” 
was well known in the Railway sheds in its day, and was 
written in the queerest English ever printed. But it 
told useful facts and, as you will see, saved a train at a 
pinch. It may be worth noticing that young Ottley^s 
chance did not come to him till he had worked on and 
among engine-repairs for some five or six years and was 
well-grounded in practical knowledge of his subject. 

Y oung Ottley’s father came to Cal¬ 
cutta in 1857 as fireman on the first 
locomotive ever run by the D. I. R., which 
was then the largest Indian railway. All 
his life he spoke broad Yorkshire, but 
young Ottley, being born in India, naturally 
talked the clipped sing-song that is used by 
the half-castes and English-speaking natives. 
When he was fifteen years old the D. I. R. 
took him into their service as an apprentice 
in the Locomotive Repair Department of 


227 


228 LAND AND SEA TALES 


the Ajaibpore workshops, and he became 
one of a gang of three or four white men 
and nine or ten natives. 

There were scores of such gangs, each 
with its hoisting and overhead cranes, jack- 
screws, vises and lathes, as separate as 
separate shops, and their work was to mend 
locomotives and make the apprentices be¬ 
have. But the apprentices threw nuts at 
one another, chalked caricatures of un¬ 
popular foremen on buffer-bars and dis¬ 
carded boilers, and did as little work as 
they possibly could. 

They were nearly all sons of old employes, 
living with their parents in the white bunga¬ 
lows of Steam Road or Church Road or 
Albert Road—on the broad avenues of 
pounded brick bordered by palms and cro¬ 
tons and bougainvilleas and bamboos which 
made up the railway town of Ajaibpore. 
They had never seen the sea or a steamer; 
half their speech was helped out with native 
slang; they were all volunteers in the 
D. I. R.’s Railway Corps—grey with red 
facings—and their talk was exclusively 
about the Company and its affairs. 

They all hoped to become engine-drivers 
earning six or eight hundred a year, and 



THE BOLD ’PRENTICE 


229 


therefore they despised all mere sit-down 
clerks in the Store, Audit and Traffic de¬ 
partments, and ducked them when they met 
at the Company’s swimming baths. 

There were no strikes or tie-ups on the 
D. I. R. in those days, for the reason that 
the ten or twelve thousand natives and two 
or three thousand whites were doing their 
best to turn the Company’s employment 
into a caste in which their sons and rela¬ 
tives would be sure of positions and pen¬ 
sions. Everything in India crystallizes into 
a caste sooner or later—the big jute and 
cotton mills, the leather harness and opium 
factories, the coal-mines and the dock¬ 
yards, and, in years to come, when India 
begins to be heard from as one of the manu¬ 
facturing countries of the world, the labour 
Unions of other lands will learn something 
about the beauty of caste which will greatly 
interest them. 

Those were the days when the D. I. R. de¬ 
cided that it would be cheaper to employ 
native drivers as much as possible, and the 
“Sheds,” as they called the Repair Depart¬ 
ment, felt the change acutely; for a native 
driver could misuse his engine, they said, 
more curiously than any six monkeys. The 



230 LAND AND SEA TALES 

Company had not then standardized its 
rolling-stock, and this was very good for 
apprentices anxious to learn about machines, 
because there were, perhaps, twenty types 
of locomotives in use on the road. They 
were Hawthornes; E. types; O types; out¬ 
side cylinders; Spaulding and Cushman 
double-enders and short-run Continental- 
built tank engines, and many others. But 
the native drivers burned them all out 
impartially, and the apprentices took to 
writing remarks in Bengali on the cabs of 
the repaired ones where the next driver 
would be sure to see them. 

Young Ottley worked at first as little as 
the other apprentices, but his father, who 
was then a pensioned driver, taught him a 
great deal about the insides of locomotives; 
and Olaf Swanson, the red-headed Swede 
who ran the Government Mail, the big 
Thursday express, from Serai Rajgara to 
Guldee Haut, was a great friend of the 
Ottley family, and dined with them every 
Friday night. 

Olaf was an important person, for besides 
being the best of the mail-drivers, he was 
Past Master of the big railway Masonic 
Lodge, “St. Duncan’s in the East,” Secre- 


THE BOLD TRENTICE 231 

tary of the Drivers’ Provident Association, 
a Captain in the D. I. R. Volunteer Corps, 
and, which he thought much more of, an 
Author; for he had written a book in a lan¬ 
guage of his own which he insisted upon 
calling English, and had printed it at his 
own expense at the ticket-printing works. 

Some of the copies were buff and green, 
and some were pinkish and blue, and some 
were yellow and brown; for Olaf did not 
believe in wasting money on high-class 
white paper. Wrapping-paper was good 
enough for him, and besides, he said the col¬ 
ours rested the eyes of the reader. It was 
called ‘^The Art of Road-Locos Repair or 
The Young Driver’s Vademecome,” and was 
dedicated in verse to a man of the name of 
Swedenborg. 

It covered every conceivable accident that 
could happen to an engine on the road; and 
gave a rough-and-ready remedy for each; 
but you had to understand Olaf’s written 
English, as well as all the technical talk 
about engines, to make head or tail of it, 
and you had also to know personally every 
engine on the D. I. R., for the ‘‘Vademe¬ 
come” was full of what might be called 
“locomotive allusions,” which concerned the 


232 LAND AND SEA TALES 

D. 1. R. only. Otherwise, it would, as some 
great locomotive designer once said, have 
been a classic and a text-book. 

Olaf was immensely proud of it, and 
would pin young Ottley in a corner and 
make him learn whole pages—it was written 
all in questions and answers—by heart. 

“Never mind what she means” Olaf 
would shout. “You learn her word-perfect, 
and she will help you in the Sheds. I drive 
the Mail ,—the mail of all India,—and what 
I write and say is true.” 

“But I do not wish to learn the book,” 
said young Ottley, who thought he saw 
quite enough of locomotives in business 
hours. 

“You shall learn! I haf great friendship 
for your father, and so I shall teach you 
whether you like it or not.” 

Young Ottley submitted, for he was really 
fond of old Olaf, and at the end of six 
months’ teaching in Olaf’s peculiar way be¬ 
gan to see that the “Vademecome” was a 
very valuable help in the repair sheds, 
when broken-down engines of a new type 
came in. Olaf gave him a copy bound in 
cartridge paper and hedged round the mar¬ 
gins with square-headed manuscript notes, 





THE BOLD TRENTICE 233 

each line the result of years of experience 
and accidents. 

“There is nothing in this book/' said Olaf, 
“that I have not tried in my time, and I say 
that the engine is like the body of a man. 
So long as there is steam—the life, you see, 
—so long, if you know how, you can make 
her move a little,—so!" He waggled his 
hand slowly. “Till a man is dead, or the 
engine she is at the bottom of a river, you 
■ can do something with her. Remember 
that! I say it and I know." 

He repaid young Ottley's time and atten¬ 
tion by using his influence to get him made 
a Sergeant in his Company, and young 
Ottley, being a keen Volunteer and a good 
shot, stood well with the D. I. R. in the 
matter of casual leave. When repairs were 
light in the Sheds and the honour of the 
D. I. R. was to be upheld at some far-away 
station against the men of Agra or Bandikui, 
the narrow-gauge railway-towns of the west, 
young Ottley would contrive to get away, 
and help to uphold it on the glaring dusty 
rifle-ranges of those parts. 

A 'prentice never dreamed of paying for 
his ticket on any line in India, least of all 
when he was in uniform, and young Ottley 




234 land and sea TALES 

was practically as free of the Indian railway 
system as any member of the Supreme 
Legislative Council who wore a golden Gen¬ 
eral Pass on his watch-chain and could ride 
where he chose. 

Late in September of his nineteenth year 
he went north on one of his cup-hunting ex¬ 
cursions, elegantly and accurately dressed, 
with one-eighth of one inch of white collar 
showing above his grey uniform stock, and 
his Martini-Henry rifle polished to match 
his sergeant’s sword in the rack above him. 

The rains were out, and in Bengal that 
means a good deal to the railways; for the 
rain falls for three months lavishly, till the 
whole country is one sea, and the snakes 
take refuge on the embankment, and the 
racing floods puff out the brick ballast from 
under the iron ties, and leave the rails hang¬ 
ing in graceful loops. Then the trains 
run as they can, and the permanent-way 
inspectors spend their nights flourishing 
about in hand-carts pushed by coolies over 
the dislocated metals, and everybody is cov¬ 
ered with the fire-red rash of prickly heat, 
and loses his temper. 

Young Ottley was used to these things 
from birth. All he regretted was that his 


THE BOLD TRENTICE 235 

friends along the line were so draggled and 
dripping and sulky that they could not ap¬ 
preciate his gorgeousness; for he considered 
himself very consoling to behold when he 
cocked his helmet over one eye and puffed 
the rank smoke of native-made cigars 
through his nostrils Until night fell he lay 
out on his bunk, in his shirt sleeves, reading 
the works of G. W. R. Reynolds, which were 
sold on all the railway bookstalls, and dozing 
at intervals. 

Then he found they were changing engines 
at Guldee Haut, and old Rustomjee, a Par- 
see, was the new driver, with Number 
Forty in hand. Young Ottley took this 
opportunity to go forward and tell Rustom¬ 
jee exactly what they thought of him in the 
Sheds, where the ’prentices had been repair¬ 
ing some of his carelessness in the way of a 
dropped crown-sheet, the result of inatten¬ 
tion and bad stoking. 

Rustomjee said he had bad luck with 
engines, and young Ottley went back to his 
carriage and slept. He was waked by a 
bang, a bump, and a jar, and saw on the 
opposite bunk a subaltern who was travel¬ 
ling north with a detachment of some 
twenty English soldiers. 


236 LAND AND SEA TALES 

“What’s that?” said the subaltern. 

“Rustomjee has blown her up, perhaps,” 
said young Ottley, and dropped out into the 
wet, the subaltern at his heels. They found 
Rustomjee sitting by the side of the line, 
nursing a scalded foot and crying aloud that 
he was a dead man, while the gunner-guard 
—who is a kind of extra-hand—looked re¬ 
spectfully at the roaring, hissing machine. 

“What has happened?” said young Ott- 
ley, by the light of the gunner-guard’s 
lantern. 

Phut gya [she has gone smash],” said 
Rustomjee, still hopping. 

“Without doubt; but where?” 

Khuda jahnta! [God knows]. I am a 
poor man. Number Forty is broke.” 

Young Ottley jumped into the cab and 
turned off all the steam he could find, for 
there was a good deal escaping. Then he 
took the lantern and dived under the drive- 
wheels, where he lay face up, investigating 
among spurts of hot water. 

“ Doocid plucky,” said the subaltern. “ I 
shouldn’t like to do that myself. What’s 
gone wrong?” 

“Cylinder-head blown off, coupler-rod 
twisted, and several more things. She is 



THE BOLD ’PRENTICE 237 

very badly wrecked. Oah, yes, she is a 
tottal wreck,” said young Ottley between 
the spokes of the right-hand driver. 

I ‘‘Awkward,” said the subaltern, turning 
up his coat-collar in the wet. “What’s to 
be done, then.^” 

Young Ottley came out, a rich black all 
over his grey uniform with the red facings, 
and drummed on his teeth with his finger 
nails, while the rain fell and the native 
passengers shouted questions and old Rus- 
tomjee told the gunner-guard to walk back 
six or seven miles and wire to someone for 
help. 

“I cannot swim,” said the gunner-guard. 
“Go and lie down.” And that, as you 
might say, settled that. Besides, as far as 
one could see by the light of the gunner- 
guard’s lantern, all Bengal was flooded. 

“Olaf Swanson will be at Serai Rajgara 
with the Mail. He will be particularly an¬ 
gry,” said young Ottley. Then he ducked 
under the engine again with a flare-lamp and 
sat cross-legged, considering things and wish¬ 
ing he had brought his “Vademecome” in 
his valise. 

Number Forty was an old reconstructed 
Mutiny engine, with Frenchified cock- 


238 LAND AND SEA TALES 

nosed cylinders and a profligate allowance of 
underpinning. She had been through the 
Sheds several times, and young Ottley, 
though he had never worked on her, had 
heard much about her, but nothing to her 
credit. 

‘‘You can lend me some men.?'’ he said at 
last to the subaltern. “Then I think we 
shall disconnect her this side, and perhaps, 
notwithstanding, she will move. We will 
try—eh 

“Of course we will. Hi! Sergeant!” 
said the subaltern. “Turn out the men 
here and do what this—this officer tells 
you.” 

“Officer!” said one of the privates, under 
his breath. “'Didn't think I'd enlisted to 
serve under a Sergeant o' Volunteers. 
'Ere's a 'orrible street accident. 'Looks 
like mother's tea-kettle broke. What d'yer 
expect us to do. Mister Civilian Sergeant.?” 

Young Ottley explained his plan of cam¬ 
paign while he was ravaging Rustomjee's 
tool-chest, and then the men crawled and 
knelt and levered and pushed and hauled 
and turned spanners under the engine, as 
young Ottley told them. What he wanted 
was to disconnect the right cylinder alto- 




THE BOLD ’PRENTICE 239 

4 

gether, and get off a badly twisted coupler- 
rod. Practically Number Forty’s right side 
was paralyzed, and they pulled away 
enough ironmongery there to build a cul¬ 
vert with. 

Young Ottley remembered that the in¬ 
structions for a case like this were all in the 
“ Vademecome,” but even he began to feel a 
little alarmed as he saw what came away 
from the engine and was stacked by the side 
of the line. After forty minutes of the 
hardest kind of work it seemed to him that 
everything movable was cleared out, and 
that he might venture to give her steam. 
She leaked and sweated and shook, but she 
moved—in a grinding sort of way—and the 
soldiers cheered. 

Rustomjee flatly refused to help in any¬ 
thing so revolutionary as driving an engine 
on one cylinder, because, he said. Heaven 
had decreed that he should always be un¬ 
lucky, even with sound machines. More¬ 
over, as he pointed out, the pressure-gauge 
was jumping up and down like a bottle- 
imp. The stoker had long since gone 
away into the night; for he was a prudent 
man. 

‘‘Doocid queer thing altogether/’ said 



240 


LAND AND SEA TALES 


the subaltern, “but look here, if you like, 
ril chuck on the coals and you can drive the 
old jigamaroo, if she’ll go.” 

“Perhaps she will blow up,” said the 
gunner-guard. 

“’Shouldn’t at all wonder by the sound of 
her. Where’s the shovel?” said the sub¬ 
altern. 

“Oah no. She’s all raight according to 
my book, I think,” said young Ottley. 
“Now we will go to Serai Rajgara—if she 
moves.” 

She moved with long ssghee! ssghee^s! of 
exhaustion and lamentation. She moved 
quite seven miles an hour, and—for the 
floods were all over the line—the staggering 
voyage began. 

The subaltern stoked four shovels to the 
minute, spreading them thin, and Number 
Forty made noises like a dying cow, and 
young Ottley discovered that it was one 
thing to run a healthy switching-locomotive 
up and down the yards for fun when the 
head of the yard wasn’t looking, and quite 
another to drive a very sick one over an 
unknown road in absolute darkness and 
tropic rain. But they felt their way along 
with their hearts in their mouths till they 




THE BOLD TRENTICE 


241 

came to a distant signal, and whistled 
frugally, having no steam to spare. 

“This might be Serai Rajgara,’" said 
young Ottley, hopefully. 

“’Looks more like the Suez Canal,” said 
the subaltern. “I say, when an engine 
kicks up that sort of a noise she’s a little 
impatient, isn’t she.^” 

“That sort of noise” was a full-powered, 
furious yelling whistle half a mile up the line. 

“That is the Down Mail,” said young 
Ottley. “We have delayed Olaf two hours 
and forty-five minutes. She must surely 
be in Serai Rajgara.” 

“’Don’t wonder she wants to get out of 
it,” said the subaltern. “Golly, what a 
country!” 

The line here dipped bodily under water, 
and young Ottley sent the gunner-guard on 
to find the switch to let Number Forty into 
the siding. Then he followed and drew up 
with a doleful wop! wop! wop! by the side 
of the great forty-five-ton, six-wheel, cou¬ 
pled, eighteen-inch inside-cylinder Number 
Twenty-five, all paint and lacquer, standing 
roaring at the head of the Down Mail. The 
rest was all water—flat, level and solid from 
one point of the horizon to the other. 



242 LAND AND SEA TALES 

OlaPs red beard flared like a danger- 
signal, and as soon as they were in range 
some knobby pieces of Giridih coal whizzed 
past young Ottley’s head. 

‘"’Your friend very mad.^” said the subal¬ 
tern, ducking. 

‘‘Aah!” roared Olaf. “This is the fifth 
time you make delay. Three hours’ delay 
you make me —Swanson—the Mail! Now 
I will lose more time to break your head.” 
He swung on to the foot-board of Number 
Forty, with a shovel in one hand. 

“Olaf!” cried young Ottley, and Olaf 
nearly tumbled backward. “Rustomjee is 
behind.” 

“Of course. He always is. But you 
How you come here.^” 

“Oah, we smashed up. I have discon¬ 
nected her and arrived here on one cylinder, 
by your book. We are only a—a diagram 
of an engine, I think.” 

“My book! My very good book. My 
WademecomeM Ottley, you ^ are a 'fine 
driver. I forgive my delays. It was worth. 
Oh, my book, my book!” and Olaf leapt 
back to Number Twenty-five, shouting 
things about Swedenborg and steam. 

“Thatt is all right,” said young Ottley, 



THE BOLD TRENTICE 243 

‘‘but where is Serai Rajgara? We want 
assistance.” 

“There is no Serai Rajgara. The water 
is two feet on the embankment, and the tele¬ 
graph office is fell in. I will report at Pur- 
nool Road. Good-night, good boy!” 

The Mail train splashed out into the dark, 
and Ottley made great haste to let off his 
steam and draw his fire. Number Forty 
had done enough for that night. 

“Odd chap, that friend of yours,” said the 
subaltern, when Number Forty stood empty 
and disarmed in the gathering waters. 
“What do we do now.^ Swim.?” 

“Oah, no! At ten-forty-five thiss morn¬ 
ing that is coming, an engine will perhaps 
arrive from Purnool Road and take us north. 
Now we will lie down and go to sleep. 
You see there is no Serai Rajgara. You 
could get a cup of tea here once on a time.” 

“Oh, my Aunt, what a country!” said the 
subaltern, as he followed Ottley to the car¬ 
riage and lay down on the leather bunk. 

For the next three weeks Olaf Swanson 
talked to everybody of nothing but his 
“Vademecome” and young Ottley. What 
he said about his book does not matter, but 
the compliments of a mail-driver are things 


244 land and sea TALES 

to be repeated, as they were, to people in 
high authority, the masters of many engines. 
So young Ottley was sent for, and he came 
from the Sheds buttoning his jacket and 
wondering which of his sins had been found 
out this time. 

It was a loop line near Ajaibpore, where 
he could by no possibility come to harm. 
It was light but steady traffic, and a first- 
class superintendent was in charge; but it 
was a driver’s billet, and permanent after 
six months. As a new engine was on order 
for the loop, the foreman of the Sheds told 
young Ottley he might look through the 
stalls and suit himself. 

He waited, boiling with impatience, till 
Olaf came in, and the two went off together, 
old Olaf clucking, “Look! Look! Look!” 
like a hen, all down the Sheds, and they chose 
a nearly new Hawthorne, No. 239, which 
Olaf highly recommended. Then Olaf went 
away, to give young Ottley his chance to 
order her to the cleaning-pit, and jerk his 
thumb at the cleaner and say, as he turned 
magnificently on his heel, “Thursday, eight 
o’clock. Mallum? Understand?” 

That was almost the proudest moment of 
his life. The very proudest was when he 


THE BOLD TRENTICE 245 

pulled out of Atami Junction through the 
brick-field on the way to his loop, and passed 
the Down Mail, with 01 af in the cab. 

They say in the Sheds that you could 
have heard Number Two hundred and 
Thirty-nine’s whistle from Raneegunge clear 
to Calcutta. 


THE NURSES 


W HEN, with a pain he desires to ex¬ 
plain to the multitude, Baby howls 
Himself black in the face, toothlessly striv¬ 
ing to curse; 

And the six-month-old Mother begins to 
enquire of the Gods if it may be 
Tummy, or Temper, or Pins—what does the 
adequate Nurse? 

See! At one turn of her head the trouble is 
guessed; and, thereafter 
She juggles (unscared by his throes) with 
drops of hot water and spoons. 

Till the hiccoughs are broken by smiles, and 
the smiles pucker up into laughter. 
And he lies o’er her shoulder and crows, 
and she, as she nurses him, croons! 

When, at the head of the grade, tumultuous 
out of the cutting, 

Pours the belated Express, roars at the night, 
and draws clear, 

246 


THE NURSES 


247 

Redly obscured or displayed by her fire- 
door’s opening and shutting— 

Symbol of strength under stress—what does 
her small engineer? 

Clamour and darkness encircle his way. Do 
they deafen or blind him? 

No!—nor the pace he must keep. He, being 
used to these things, 

Placidly follows his work, which is laying his 
mileage behind him. 

While his passengers trustfully sleep, and he, 
as he handles her, sings! 

When, with the gale at her heel, the barque 
lies down and recovers— 

Rolling through forty degrees, combing the 
stars with her tops, 

What says the man at the wheel, holding her 
straight as she hovers 

On the shoulders of wind-screening seas, 
steadying her as she drops ? 


Behind him the blasts without check from 
the Pole to the Tropic, pursue him. 
Heaving up, heaping high, slamming home, 
the surges he must not regard: 





248 LAND AND SEA TALES 

Beneath him the crazy wet deck, and all 
Ocean on end to undo him; 

Above him one desperate sail, thrice-reefed 
but still buckling the yard! 

Under his hand fleet the spokes and return, 
to be held or set free again; 

And she bows and makes shift to obey their 
behest, till the master-wave comes 

And her gunnel goes under in thunder and 
smokes, and she chokes in the trough 
of the sea again! 

Ere she can lift and make way to its crest; 
and he, as he nurses her, hums! 


These have so utterly mastered their work that 
they work without thinking; 

Holding three-fifths of their brain in reserve 
for whatever betide. 

So, when catastrophe threatens, of colic, col¬ 
lision or sinking. 

They shunt the full gear into train, and take 
the small thing in their stride. 


THE SON OF HIS FATHER 




i 


\ 






} 


k 


I 




« 


# 









f! 



# • I 




THE SON OF HIS FATHER 


I T IS a queer name/’ Mrs. Strickland ad¬ 
mitted, ‘‘and none of our family have 
ever borne it; but, you see, he is the first 
man to us.” 

So he was called Adam, and to that world 
about him he was the first of men—a man- 
child alone. Heaven sent him no Eve for a 
companion, but all earth, horse and foot, 
was at his feet. As soon as he was old 
enough to appear in public he held a levee, 
and Strickland’s sixty policemen, with their 
sixty clanking sabres, bowed to the dust 
before him. When his fingers closed a little 
on Imam Din’s sword-hilt they rose and 
roared till Adam roared too, and was with¬ 
drawn. 

“Now that was no cry of fear,” said 
Imam Din afterwards, speaking to his 
companion in the Police lines. “He was 
angry—and so young! Brothers, he will 
make a very strong Police officer.” 

“Does the Memsahib nurse him.^” said a 

251 



252 LAND AND SEA TALES 

new recruit, the dye-smell not yet out of his 
yellow cotton uniform. 

'‘Ho!’' said an up-country Naik scorn¬ 
fully; "it has not been known for more than 
ten days that my woman nurses him.” He 
curled his moustaches as lordly as ever an 
Inspector could afford to do, for he knew 
that the husband of the foster-mother of the 
son of the District Superintendent of Police 
was a man of consideration. 

"I am glad,” said Imam Din, loosening 
his belt. "Those who drink our blood be¬ 
come of our own blood, and I have seen, in 
those thirty years, that the sons of Sahibs 
once being born here return when they are 
men. Yes, they return after they have been 
to Belait [Europe].” 

"And what do they in Belait.^” asked the 
recruit respectfully. 

"Get instruction—which thou hast not,” 
returned the Naik. "Also they drink of 
belaitee-panee [soda-water] enough to give 
them that devil’s restlessness which endures 
for all their lives. Whence we of Hind have 
trouble.” 

"My father’s uncle,” said Imam Din 
slowly, with importance, "was Ressaldar of 
the Long Coat Horse; and the Empress 



THE SON OF HIS FATHER 253 

called him to Europe in the year that she 
had accomplished fifty years of rule. He 
said (and there were also other witnesses) 
that the Sahibs there drink only common 
water even as do we; and that the helaitee- 
panee does not run in all their rivers.’’ 

‘"He said that there was a Shish Mahal 
—a glass palace—half a mile in length, and 
that the rail-train ran under roads; and that 
there are boats bigger than a village. He is 
a great talker.” The Naik spoke scorn¬ 
fully. He had no well-born uncles. 

He is at least a man of good birth,” said 
Imam Dim, and the Naik was silent. 

“Ho! Ho!” Imam Din reached out 
to his pipe, chuckling till his fat sides shook 
again. “Strickland Sahib’s foster-mother 
was the wife of a gardener in the Ferozepur 
district. I was a young man then. This 
child also will be suckled here and he will 
have double wisdom, and when he is a Police 
officer it will be very bad for the thieves in 
this part of the world. Ho! Ho!” 

“Strickland Sahib’s butler has said,” the 
Naik went on, “that they will call him 
Adam—and no jaw-splitting English name. 
Udaam. The padre will name him at their 
church in due time.” 




2 S4 LAND AND SEA TALES 

‘‘Who can tell the ways of Sahibs? Now 
Strickland Sahib knows more of the Faith 
than ever I had time to learn—prayers, 
charms, names and stories of the Blessed 
Ones. Yet he is not a Mussulman,’’ said 
Imam Din thoughtfully. 

“For the reason that he knows as much 
of the gods of Hindustan, and so he rides 
with a rein in each hand. Remember that 
he sat under the Baba Atal, a faquir among 
faquirs, for ten days; whereby a man came 
to be hanged for the murder of a dancing girl 
on the night of the great earthquake,” the 
Naik replied. 

“True—it is true. And yet—the Sahibs 
are one day so wise—and another so foolish. 
But he has named the child well; Adam. 
Huzrut Adam. Ho! Ho! Father Adam 
we must call him.” 

“And all who minister to the child,” said 
the Naik quietly, but with meaning, “will 
come to great honour.” 

Adam throve, being prayed over before 
the Gods of at least three creeds, in a garden 
almost as fair as Eden. There were gigantic 
clumps of bamboos that talked continually, 
and enormous plantains, trees on whose 
soft, paper skin he could scratch with his 





THE SON OF HIS FATHER 255 

nails; green domes of mango-trees as huge 
as the dome of St. Paul’s, full of parrots as 
big as cassowaries and grey squirrels the 
size of foxes. At the end of the garden 
stood a hedge of flaming poinsettias higher 
than anything in the world, because, child¬ 
like, Adam’s eye could not carry to the 
tops of the mango-trees. Their green went 
out against the blue sky, but the red poin¬ 
settias he could just see. A nurse who 
talked continually about snakes and pulled 
him back from the mouth of a fascinating 
dry well, and a mother who believed that 
the sun hurt little heads, were the only 
drawbacks to this loveliness. But, as his 
legs grew under him, he found that by 
scaling an enormous rampart—three feet 
of broken-down mud wall at the end of the 
garden—he could come into a ready-made 
kingdom, where everyone was his slave. 
Imam Din showed him the way one eve¬ 
ning, and the Police troopers, cooking their 
supper, received him with rapture, and gave 
him pieces of very indigestible, but alto¬ 
gether delightful, spiced bread. 

Here he sat or sprawled in the horse-feed 
where the Police were picketed in a double 
line, and he named them, men and beasts 



2 s6 land and sea tales 

together, according to his ideas and ex¬ 
periences, as his First Father had done be¬ 
fore him. In those days everything had a 
name, from the mud mangers to the heel- 
ropes, for things were people to Adam ex¬ 
actly as people are things to folk in their 
second childhood. Through all the con¬ 
ferences—one hand twisted into Imam 
Din’s beard, and the other on his polished 
belt buckle—there were two other people 
who came and went across the talk—Death 
and Sickness—persons greater than Imam 
Din, and stronger than the heel-roped 
horses. There was Mata, the small-pox, a 
woman in some way connected with pigs; 
and Heza, the cholera, a black man, accord¬ 
ing to Adam; and Booka, starvation; and 
Kismet, who settled all questions, from the 
untimely choking of a pet mungoose in the 
kitchen-drain to the absence of a young 
Policeman who once missed a parade and 
never came back. It was all very wonderful 
to Adam, but not worth much thinking over; 
for a child’s mind is bounded by his eyes ex¬ 
actly as a horse’s view of the road is limited 
by his blinkers. Between all these objec¬ 
tionable shadowy vagrants stood a ring of 
kind faces and strong arms, and Mata and 





THE SON OF HIS FATHER 257 

Heza would never touch Adam, the first of 
men. Kismet might do so, because—and 
this was a mystery no staring into his 
looking-glass would solve—Kismet was writ¬ 
ten, like Police orders for the day, in or on 
Adam’s head. Imam Din could not ex¬ 
plain how this might be, and it was from 
that grey, fat Mohammedan that Adam 
learned through every inflection the Khuda 
jhanta [God knows!] that settles everything 
in the mind of Asia. 

Beyond the fact that ‘‘ Khuda” [God] was 
a very good man and kept lions, Adam’s 
theology did not run far. Mrs. Strickland 
tried to teach him a few facts, but he re¬ 
volted at the story of Genesis as untrue. A 
turtle, he said, upheld the world, and one-half 
the adventures of Huzrut Nu [Father Noah] 
had never been told. If Mamma wanted 
to hear them she must ask Imam Din. 

‘Ht’s awful,” said Mrs. Strickland, half 
crying, "'to think of his growing up like a 
little heathen.” Mrs. Strickland had been 
born and brought up in England, and did 
not quite understand Eastern things. 

"Let him alone,” said Strickland. "He’ll 
grow out of it all, or it will only come back 
to him in dreams.” 



258 LAND AND SEA TALES 

‘‘Are you sure?’’ said his wife. 

“Quite. I was sent home when I was 
seven, and they flicked it out of me with a 
wet towel at Harrow. Public schools don’t 
encourage anything that isn’t quite English.’^ 

Mrs. Strickland shuddered, for she had 
been trying not to think of the separation 
that follows motherhood in India, and 
makes life there, for all that is written to 
the contrary, not quite the most desirable 
thing in the world. Adam trotted out to 
hear about more miracles, and his nurse 
must have worried him beyond bounds, for 
she came back weeping, saying that Adam 
Baba was in danger of being eaten alive by 
wild horses. 

As a matter of fact he had shaken off 
Juma by bolting between a couple of pick¬ 
eted horses, and lying down under their 
bellies. That they were old personal friends 
of his, Juma did not understand, nor Strick¬ 
land either. Adam was settled at ease when 
his father arrived, breathless and white, 
and the stallions put back their ears and 
squealed. 

“If you come here,” said Adam, ‘'they 
will hit you kicks. Tell Juma I have eaten 
my rice, and I wish to be alone.” 


THE SON OF HIS FATHER 259 

“Come out at once/’ said Strickland, for 
the horses were beginning to paw. 

“Why should I obey Juma’s order.? She 
is afraid of horses.” 

“It is not Juma’s order. It is mine. 
Obey!” 

“Ho!” said Adam. “Juma did not tell 
me that”; and he crawled out on all fours 
among the shod feet. Mrs. Strickland was 
crying bitterly with fear and excitement, 
and as a sacrifice to the home gods Adam 
had to be whipped. He said with perfect 
justice— 

“There was no order that I should not 
sit with the horses, and they are my horses. 
Why is there this tamasha [fuss].?” 

Strickland’s face showed him that the 
whipping was coming, and the child turned 
white. Motherlike, Mrs. Strickland left 
the room, but Juma, the foster-mother, 
stayed to see. 

“Am I to be whipped here.?” he gasped. 

“Of course.” 

“Before that woman? Father, I am a 
man—I am not afraid. It is my izzat —my 
honour.” 

Strickland only laughed—(to this day I 
cannot imagine what possessed him), and 





26 o land and sea tales 


gave Adam the little tap-tap with a riding 
cane that was whipping sufficient for his 
years. 

When it was all over, Adam said quietly, 
‘'I am little and you are big. If I had 
stayed among my horse-folk I should not 
have been whipped. You are afraid to go 
there.” 

The merest chance led me to Strickland’s 
house that afternoon. When I was half¬ 
way down the drive Adam passed me with¬ 
out recognition, at a fast run. I caught one 
glimpse of his face under his big hat, and it 
was the face of his father as I had once seen 
it in the grey of the morning when it bent 
over a leper. I caught the child by the 
shoulder. 

‘‘Let me go!” he screamed; though he 
and I were the best of friends, as a rule. 
“Let me go!” 

“Where to. Father Adam.^” He was 
quivering like a haltered colt. 

“To the well. I have been beaten. * I 
have been beaten before a woman! Let me 
go!” He tried to bite my hand. 

“That is a small matter,” I said. “Men 
are born to beatings.” 

“ Thou hast never been beaten,” he said 


THE SON OF HIS FATHER 261 


savagely (we were talking in the native 
tongue). 

‘‘Indeed I have; times past counting.’’ 

“Before women.?” 

“ My mother and my ayah saw. By 
women, too, for that matter. What of 
it.?” 

“What didst thou do?” He stared be¬ 
yond my shoulder up the long drive. 

“It is long ago, and I have forgotten. I 
was older than thou art; but even then I 
forgot, and now the thing is only a jest to 
be talked of.” 

Adam drew one big breath and broke 
down utterly in my arms. Then he raised 
his head, and his eyes were Strickland’s eyes 
when Strickland gave orders. 

“Ho! Imam Din!” 

The fat orderly seemed to spring out of 
the earth at our feet, crashing through the 
bushes, and standing at attention. 

“Hast thou ever been beaten?” said 
Adam. 

“Assuredly. By my father when I was 
thirty years old. He beat me with a 
plough-beam before all the women of the 
village.” 

“Wherefore.?” 


262 LAND AND SEA TALES 


‘‘Because I had returned to the village on 
leave from the Government service, and said 
of the village elders that they had not seen 
the world. Therefore he beat me to show 
that no seeing of the world changes father 
and son.’’ 

“And thou.^” 

“I stood up to the beating. He was my 
father.” 

“Good,” said Adam, and turned on his 
heel without another word. 

Imam Din looked after him. “An ele¬ 
phant breeds but once in a lifetime, but he 
breeds elephants. Yet, I am glad I am no 
father of tuskers,” said he. 

“What is it all.?” I asked. 

“His father beat him with a whip no 
bigger than a reed. But the child could not 
have done what he desired to do without 
leaping through me. And I am of some few 
pounds weight. Look!” 

Imam Din stepped back through the 
bushes, and the pressed grass showed that 
he had been lying curled round the mouth 
of the dry well. 

“When there was talk of beating, I knew 
that one who sat among horses such as ours 
was not like to kiss his father’s hand. He 


THE SON OF HIS FATHER 263 

might have done away with himself. So I 
lay down in this place.’’ We stood still 
looking at the well-curb. 

Adam came along the garden path to us. 
“I have spoken to my father,” he said sim¬ 
ply. “Imam Din, tell thy Naik that his 
woman is dismissed my service.” 

Huzoor! [Your Highness!]” said Imam 
Din, stooping low. 

“For no fault of hers.” 

“Protector of the Poor!” 

“And to-day.” 

Khodawund! [Heaven-born!]” 

“It is an order. Go!” 

Again the salute, and Imam Din de¬ 
parted, with that same set of the back which 
he wore when he had taken an order from 
Strickland. I thought that it would be 
well to go too, but Strickland beckoned me 
from the verandah. When I came up he 
was perfectly white, rocking to and fro in 
his chair. 

“Do you know he was going to chuck 
himself down the well—because I tapped 
him just now.^” he said helplessly. 

“I ought to,” I replied. “He has just 
dismissed his nurse—on his own authority^ 
I suppose?” 




264 land and sea TALES 

‘‘He told me just now that he wouldn’t 
have her for a nurse any more. I never 
supposed he meant it for an instant. I 
suppose she’ll have to go.” 

Now Strickland, the Police officer, was 
feared through the length and breadth of 
the Punjab by murderers, horse-thieves, and 
cattle-lifters. 

Adam returned, halting outside the ve¬ 
randah. 

“I have sent Juma away because she saw 
that—that which happened. Until she is 
gone I do not come into the house,” he said. 

“But to send away thy foster-mother!” 
said Strickland with reproach. 

“/ do not send her away. It is thy 
blame,” and the small forefinger was pointed 
to Strickland. “I will not obey her. I will 
not eat from her hand. I will not sleep 
with her. Send her away!” 

Strickland stepped out and lifted the child 
into the verandah. 

“This folly has lasted long enough,” *he 
said. “Come now and be wise.” 

“I am little and you are big,” said Adam 
between set teeth. “You can beat me 
before this man or cut me to pieces. But 
I will not have Juma for my ayah any more. 



THE SON OF HIS FATHER 265 

She saw me beaten. I will not eat till she 
goes. I swear it by—my father’s head.” 

Strickland sent him indoors to his mother, 
and we could hear sounds of weeping and 
Adam’s voice saying nothing more than 
‘‘Send Juma away!” Presently Juma came 
in and wept too, and Adam repeated, “It is 
no fault of thine, but go!” 

And the end of it was that Juma went 
with all her belongings, and Adam fought 
his own way into his little clothes until the 
new ayah came. His address of welcome 
to her was rather amazing. In a few words 
it ran: “ If I do wrong, send me to my father. 
If you strike me, I will try to kill you. I 
do not wish my ayah to play with me. Go 
and eat rice!” 

From that Adam foreswore the society of 
ayahs and small native boys as much as a 
small boy can, confining himself to Imam 
Din and his friends of the Police. The 
Naik, Juma’s husband, had been presuming 
not a little on his position, and when Adam’s 
favour was withdrawn from his wife he 
thought it best to apply for a transfer to 
another post. There were too many com¬ 
panions anxious to report his shortcomings 
to Strickland. 


266 LAND AND SEA TALES 


Towards his father Adam kept a guarded 
neutrality. There was not a touch of sulki¬ 
ness in it, for the child’s temper was as clear 
as a bell. But the difference and the polite¬ 
ness worried Strickland. 

If the Policemen had loved Adam before 
the affair of the well, they worshipped him 
now. 

‘‘He knows what honour means,” said 
Imam Din. “He has justified himself upon 
a point thereof. He has carried an order 
through his father’s household as a child of 
the Blood might do. Therefore he is not 
altogether a child any longer. Wah! He 
is a tiger’s cub.’^ The next time that 
Adam made his little unofficial inspection 
of the lines. Imam Din, and, by conse¬ 
quence, all the others, stood upon their feet 
with their hands to their sides, instead of 
calling out from where they lay, “Salaam, 
Babajee,” and other disrespectful things. 

But Strickland took counsel with his wife, 
and she with the cheque-book and their 
lean bank account, and they decided that 
Adam must go “home” to his aunts. But 
England is not home to a child who has been 
born in India, and it never becomes home¬ 
like unless he spends all his youth there. 


THE SON OF HIS FATHER 267 

Their bank-book showed that if they econ¬ 
omized through the summer by going to a 
cheap hill-station instead of to Simla (where 
Mrs. Strickland’s parents lived, and where 
Strickland might be noticed by the Govern¬ 
ment) they could send Adam home in the 
next spring. It would be hard pinching, 
but it could be done. 

Dalhousie was chosen as being the cheap¬ 
est of the hill-stations;—Dalhousie and a 
little five-roomed cottage full of mildew, 
tucked away among the rhododendrons. 

Adam had been to Simla three or four 
times, and knew by name most of the 
drivers on the road there, but this new place 
disquieted him. He came to me for infor¬ 
mation, his hands deep in his knickerbocker 
pockets, walking step for step as his father 
walked. 

“There will be none of my hhai-bund 
[brotherhood] up there,” he said disconso¬ 
lately, “and they say that I must lie still in 
a doolie [palanquin] for a day and a night, 
being carried like a sheep. I wish to take 
some of my mpunted men to Dalhousie.” 

I told him that there was a small boy, 
called Victor, at Dalhousie, who had a calf 
for a pet, and was allowed to play with it 



268 LAND AND SEA TALES 


on the public roads. After that A-dam 
could not sufficiently hurry the packing. 

“First,” said he, “I shall ask that man 
Victor to let me play with the cow’s child. 
If he is muggra [ill-conditioned], I shall 
tell my Policemen to take it away.” 

“But that is unjust,” said Strickland, 
“and there is no order that the Police should 
do injustice.” 

“When the Government pay is not suffi¬ 
cient, and low-2caste men are promoted, 
what can an honest man do.?” Adam replied, 
in the very touch and accent of Imam Din; 
and Strickland’s eyebrows went up. 

“You talk too much to the Police, my 
son,” he said. 

“Always. About everything,” said Adam 
promptly. “They say that when I am an 
officer I shall know as much as my father.” 

“God forbid, little one!” 

“They say, too, that you are as clever as 
Shaitan [the Evil One], to know things.” 

“They say that, do they.?” and Strick¬ 
land looked pleased. His pay was small, 
but he had his reputation, and it was dear 
to him. 

“They say also—not to me, but to one 
another when they eat rice behind the wall— 


THE SON OF HIS FATHER 269 

that in your own heart you esteem yourself 
as wise as Suleiman [Soloman], who was 
cheated by Shaitan.” 

This time Strickland did not look so 
pleased. Adam, in all innocence, launched 
into a long story about Suleiman-bin- 
Daoud, who once, out of vanity, pitted his 
wits against Shaitan, and because God was 
not on his side Shaitan sent ‘‘a little devil 
of low caste,” as Adam put it, who cheated 
him utterly and put him to shame before 
‘‘all the other Kings.” 

“By Gum!” said Strickland, when the 
tale was done, and went away, while Adam 
took me to task for laughing at Imam 
Din’s stories. I did not wonder that he 
was called Huzrut Adam, for he looked old 
as all time in his grave childhood, sitting 
cross-legged, his battered little helmet far 
at the back of his head, his forefinger wag¬ 
ging up and down, native fashion, and the 
wisdom of serpents on his unconscious lips. 

That May he went up to Dalhousie with 
his mother, and in those days the journey 
ended in fifty or sixty miles of uphill travel 
in a doolie or palanquin along a road wind¬ 
ing through the Himalayas. Adam sat in 
the doolie with his mother, and Strickland 


270 LAND AND SEA TALES 

rode and tied with me, a spare doolie follow¬ 
ing. The march began after we got out of 
the train at Pathankot, in a wet hot night 
among the rice and poppy fields. 

II 

It was all new to Adam, and he had opin¬ 
ions to advance—notably about a fish that 
jumped in a way-side pond. ^'Now I 
know,’’ he shouted, ‘‘how God puts them 
there! First He makes them up above and 
•then He drops them down. That was a 
new one.” Then, lifting his head to the 
stars, he cried: “Oh, God, do it again, but 
slowly, so that I, Adam, may see.” 

But nothing happened, and the doolie^ 
bearers lit the noisome, dripping rag-torches, 
and Adam’s eyes shone big in the dancing 
light, and we smelt the dry dust of the 
plains that we were leaving after eleven 
months’ hard work. 

At stated times the men ceased their 
drowsy, grunting tune, and sat down for a 
smoke. Between the guttering of their 
water-pipes we could hear the cries of the* 
beasts of the night, and the wind stirring 
in the folds of the mountain ahead. At the 
changing-station the voice of Adam, the 


THE SON OF HIS FATHER 271 

First of Men, would be lifted to rouse the 
sleepers in the huts till the fresh relay of 
bearers shambled from their cots and the 
relief pony with them. 

Then we would re-form and go on, and by 
the time the moon rose Adam was asleep, 
and there was no sound in the night except 
the grunting of the men, the husky mur¬ 
mur of some river a thousand feet down 
in the valley, and the squeaking of Strick¬ 
land’s saddle. So we went up from date- 
palm to deodar, till the dawn wind came 
round a corner all fresh from the snows, and 
we snuffed it. I heard Strickland say, 
‘‘Wife, my overcoat, please,” and Adam, 
fretfully, “Where is Dalhousie and the 
cow’s child?” Then I slept till Strickland 
turned me out of the warm doolie at seven 
o’clock, and I stepped into all the splendour 
of a cool Hill day, the Plains sweltering 
twenty miles back and four thousand feet 
below. Adam waked too, and needs must 
ride in front of me to ask a million questions, 
and shout at the monkeys and clap his hands 
when the painted pheasants bolted across 
our road, and hail every woodcutter and 
drover and pilgrim within sight, till we 
halted for breakfast at a rest house. After 


272 LAND AND SEA TALES 

that, being a child, he went out to play with 
a train of bullock-drivers halted by the 
roadside, and we had to chase him out of a 
native liquor shop, where he was bargaining 
with a native seven-year-old for a parrot in a 
bamboo cage. 

Said he, wriggling on my pommel as we 
went on again, ‘‘There were four men 
behosh [insensible] at the back of that house. 
Wherefore do men grow behosh from drink- 

i„gr 

“It is the nature of the waters,” I said, 
and, calling back, “Strick, what’s that grog¬ 
shop doing so close to the road? It’s a 
temptation to any one’s servants.” 

“ Dunno,” said a sleepy voice in the doolie. 
“This is Kennedy’s District. ’Twasn’t here 
in my time.” 

“Truly the waters smell bad,” Adam went 
on. “I smelt them, but I did not get the 
parrot even for six annas. The woman of 
the house gave me a love gift that I found 
playing near the verandah.” 

“And what was the gift. Father Adam?” 

“A nose-ring for my ayah. Ohe! Ohe! 
Look at that camel with the muzzle on his 
nose!” 

A string of loaded camels came cruising 


THE SON OF HIS FATHER 273 

round the corner as a fleet rounds a 
cape. 

“Ho, Malik! Why does not a camel 
salaam like an elephantHis neck is long 
enough,” Adam cried. 

“The Angel Jibrail made him a fool at the 
beginning,” said the driver, as he swayed 
on the top of the leading beast, and laughter 
ran all along the line of red-bearded men. 

“That is true,” said Adam solemnly, and 
they laughed again. 

At last, in the late afternoon, we came to 
Dalhousie, the loveliest of the hill-stations, 
and separated, Adam hardly able to be 
restrained from setting out at once to find 
Victor and the “cow’s child.” I found 
them both, something to my trouble, next 
morning. The two young sinners had a 
calf on a tight rope just at a sharp turn in 
the Mall, and were pretending that he was 
a raja’s elephant who had gone mad; 
and they shouted with delight. Then we 
began to talk, and Adam, by way of crush¬ 
ing Victor’s repeated reminders to me that he 
and not “that other” was the owner of the 
calf, said, “It is true I have no cow’s child; 
but a great dacoity [robbery] has been done 
on my father.” 


274 land and sea TALES 

“We came up together yesterday. There 
could have been nothing,” I said. 

“It was my mother’s horse. She has 
been dacoited with beating and blows, and 
now is so thin.” He held his hands an inch 
apart. ‘‘My father is at the telegraph- 
house sending telegrams. Imam Din will 
cut off all their heads. I desire your saddle¬ 
cloth for a howdah for my elephant. Give 
It me! 

This was exciting, but not lucid. I went 
to the telegraph office and found Strickland 
in a black temper among many telegraph 
forms. A dishevelled, one-eyed groom 
stood in a corner whimpering at intervals. 
He was a man whom Adam invariably ad¬ 
dressed as Be-shakl, be-ukl, be~ank'’ [ugly, 
stupid, eyeless]. It seemed that Strickland 
had sent his wife’s horse up to Dalhousie by 
road, a fortnight’s march, in the groom’s 
charge. This is the custom in Upper India. 
Among the foothills, near Dhunnera or 
Dhar, horse and man had been violently set 
upon in the night by four men, who had 
beaten the groom (his leg was bandaged 
from knee to ankle in proof), had incident¬ 
ally beaten the horse, and had robbed the 
groom of the bucket and blanket, and all 


THE SON OF HIS FATHER 275 

his money—eleven rupees, nine annas. 
Last, they had left him for dead by the way- 
side, where some woodcutters had found and 
nursed him. Then the one-eyed man howl¬ 
ed with anguish, thinking over his bruises. 
“They asked me if I was Strickland Sahib’s 
servant, and I, thinking the Protection of 
the Name would be sufficient, spoke the 
truth. Then they beat me grievously.” 

“H’m!” said Strickland. “I thought 
they wouldn’t dacoit as a business on the 
Dalhousie road. This is meant for me 
personally—sheer hadmashi [impudence]. 
All right.” 

In justice to a very hard-working class it 
must be said that the thieves of Upper India 
have the keenest sense of humour. The 
last compliment that they can pay a Police 
officer is to rob him, and if, as once they did, 
they can loot a Deputy Inspector-General 
of Police, on the eve of his retirement, of 
everything except the clothes on his back, 
their joy is complete. They cause letters of 
derision and telegrams of condolence to be 
sent to the victim; for of all men thieves 
are most compelled to keep abreast of 
progress. 

Strickland was a man of few words where 


276 LAND AND SEA TALES 

his business was concerned. I had never 
seen a Police officer robbed before, and I 
expected some excitement, but Strickland 
held his tongue. He took the groom’s de¬ 
position, and then retired into himself for a 
time. Then he sent Kennedy, of the Path- 
ankot District, an official letter and an un¬ 
official note. Kennedy’s reply was purely 
unofficial, and it ran thus: “This seems a 
compliment solely intended for you. My 
wonder is you didn’t get it before. The 
men are probably back in your district by 
now. My Dhunnera and foot-hill people 
are highly respectable cultivators, and, 
seeing my Assistant is an unlicked pup, and 
I can’t trust my Inspector out of my sight. 
I’m not going to turn their harvest upside 
down with Police investigations. I’m run 
off my feet with vaccination Police work. 
You’d better look at home. The Shub- 
kudder gang were through here a fortnight 
back. They laid up at the Amritsar Serai, 
and then worked down. No cases against 
them in my charge; but, remember, you 
imprisoned their head-man for receiving 
stolen goods in Prub Dyal’s burglary. They 
owe you one.” 

“Exactly what I thought,” said Strick- 


THE SON OF HIS FATHER 277 

land. ‘H had a notion it was the Shub- 
kudder gang from the first. We must make 
it pleasant for them at Peshawur, and in 
my District, too. They’re just the kind 
that would lie up under Imam Din’s 
shadow.” 

From this point onward the wires began 
to be worked heavily. Strickland had a 
very fair knowledge of the Shubkudder gang, 
gathered at first hand. 

They were the same syndicate that had 
once stolen a Deputy Commissioner’s cow, 
put horse-shoes on her, and taken her forty 
miles into the jungle before they lost in¬ 
terest in the joke. They added insult to 
insult by writing that the Deputy Com¬ 
missioner’s cows and horses were so much 
alike that it took them two days to find out 
the difference and they would not lift the 
like of such cattle any more. 

The District Superintendent at Peshawur 
replied to Strickland that he was expecting 
the gang, and Strickland’s Assistant, in his 
own district, being young and full of zeal, 
sent up the most amazing clues. 

“Now that’s just what I want that young 
fool not to do,” said Strickland. “He’s an 
English boy, born and bred, and his father 


278 LAND AND SEA TALES 

before him. He has about as much tact 
as a bull, and he won’t work quietly under 
my Inspector. I wish the Government 
would keep our service for country-born 
men. Those first five or six years in India 
give a man a pull that lasts him all his life. 
Adam, if only you were old enough to be 
my Assistant!” He looked down at the 
little fellow in the verandah. Adam was 
deeply interested in the dacoity, and, unlike 
a child, did not lose interest after the first 
week. On the contrary, he would ask his 
father every evening what had been done, 
and Strickland had drawn him a map on the 
white wall of the verandah, showing the 
different towns in which Policemen were on 
the look-out for thieves. They were Am¬ 
ritsar, Jullunder, Phillour, Gurgaon, Rawal 
Pindi, Peshawur and Multan. Adam looked 
up at it as he answered— 

‘‘There has been great dikh [trouble] in 
this case?” 

“Very great trouble. I wish that thou 
wert a young man and my Assistant to 
help me.” 

“Dost thou need help, my father?” Adam 
asked curiously, with his head on one side. 

“Very much.” 



THE SON OF HIS FATHER 279 

“Leave it all alone. It is bad. Let 
loose everything.’’ 

“That must not be. Those beginning a 
business continue to the end.” 

“Thou wilt continue to the end.^ Dost 
thou not know who did the dacoity.^” 

Strickland shook his head. Adam turned 
to me with the same question, and I an¬ 
swered it in the same way. 

“What foolish people!” he said, and 
turned his back on us. 

He showed plainly in all our dealings af¬ 
terwards how we had fallen in his opinion. 
Strickland told me that he would sit at the 
door of his father’s workroom and stare 
at him for half an hour at a time as he went 
through his papers. Strickland seemed to 
work harder over the case than if he had 
been in office in the Plains. 

“And sometimes I look up and I fancy 
the little chap’s laughing at me. It’s an 
awful thing to have a son. You see, he’s 
your own and his own, and between the 
two you don’t quite know how to handle 
him,” said Strickland. “I wonder what in 
the world he thinks about.” 

I asked Adam this later on, quietly. He 
put his head on one side for a moment and 


28o land and sea tales 


replied: ‘'In these days I think about 
great things. I do not play with Victor and 
the cow’s child any more. Victor is only 
a baba.” 

At the end of the third week of Strick¬ 
land’s leave, the result of Strickland’s 
labours—labours that had made Mrs. Strick¬ 
land more indignant against the dacoits than 
any one else—came to hand. The Police 
at Peshawur reported that half of the Shub- 
kudder gang were held at Peshawur to 
account for the possession of some blankets 
and a horse-bucket. Strickland’s assistant 
had also four men under suspicion in his 
charge; and Imam Din must have stirred 
up Strickland’s Inspector to investigations 
on his own account, for a string of inco¬ 
herent telegrams came in from the Club 
Secretary in which he entreated, exhorted, 
and commanded Strickland to take his 
“mangy Policemen” off the Club premises. 
“Your men, in servants’ quarters here, 
examining cook. Billiard-marker indignant. 
Steward threatens resignation. Members 
furious. Grooms stopped on roads. Shut 
up, or my resignation goes to Committee.” 

“Now I shouldn’t in the least wonder,” 
said Strickland thoughtfully to his wife, 



THE SON OF HIS FATHER 281 


*‘if the Club was not just the place where the 
men would lie up. Billy Watson isn’t at all 
pleased, though. I think I shall have to 
cut my leave by a week and go down to 
take charge. If there’s anything to be 
told, the men will tell me.” 

Mrs. Strickland’s eyes filled with tears. 
“I shall try to steal ten days if I can in the 
autumn,” he said soothingly, ‘‘but I must 
go now. It will never do for the gang 

to think that they can burgle my belong- 

• >> 
mgs. 

That was in the forenoon, and Strickland 
asked me to lunch to leave me some instruc¬ 
tions about his big dog, with authority to 
rebuke those who did not attend to her. 
Tietjens was growing too old and too fat to 
live in the plains in the summer. When I 
came, Adam had climbed into his high chair 
at table, and Mrs. Strickland seemed ready 
to weep at any moment over the general 
misery of things. 

“I go down to the Plains to-morrow, my 
son,” said Strickland. 

“Wherefore.?” said Adam, reaching out 
for a ripe mango and burying his head in it. 

“Imam Din has caught the men who 
did the dacoity, and there are also others at 


282 LAND AND SEA TALES 


Peshawur under suspicion. I must go to 
see. 

Bus! [enough]/’ said Adam, between 
sucks at his mango, as Mrs. Strickland 
tucked the napkin round his neck. ‘‘Im¬ 
am Din speaks lies. Do not go.” 

“It is necessary. There has been great 
dikh-dari [trouble-giving].” 

Adam came out of the fruit for a minute 
and laughed. Then, returning, he spoke 
between slow and deliberate mouthfuls. 

“The dacoits live in Beshakl’s head. They 
will never be caught. All people know that. 
The cook knows, and the scullion, and 
Rahim Baksh here.” 

“Nay,” said the butler behind his chair 
hastily. “What should / know? Nothing 
at all does the Servant of the Presence 
know.” 

Accha [good],” said Adam, and sucked 
on. “Only it is known.” 

“Speak, then,” said Strickland to him. 
“What dost thou know? Remember my 
groom was beaten insensible.” 

“That was in the bad-water shop where 
I played when we came up here. The boy 
who would not sell me the parrot for six 
annas told me that a one-eyed man had 


THE SON OF HIS FATHER 283 

come there and drunk the bad waters and 
gone mad. He broke bedsteads. They hit 
him with a bamboo till he was senseless, and 
fearing he was dead, they nursed him on 
milk—like a little baba. When I was play¬ 
ing first with the cow’s child, I asked Beshakl 
if he were that man, and he said no. But 
I knew, because many woodcutters in Dal- 
housie asked him whether his head were 
whole now.” 

“But why,” I interrupted, “did Beshakl 
tell lies?” 

“Oh! He is a low-caste man, and de¬ 
sired to get consideration. Now he is a 
witness in a great law-case, and men will 
go to the jail on his account. It was to give 
trouble and obtain notice that he did it.” 

“Was it all lies?” said Strickland. 

“Ask him,” said Adam, through the 
mango-pulp. 

Strickland passed through the door. 
There was a howl of despair in the servants’ 
quarters up the hill, and he returned with 
the one-eyed groom. 

“Now,” said Strickland, “it is known. 
Declare!” 

“Beshakl,” said Adam, while the man 
gasped. “Imam Din has caught four 



284 land and sea TALES 

men, and there are some more at Peshawur. 
Bus! Bus! Bus! [Enough.]” 

"‘Thou didst get drunk by the wayside, 
and didst make a false case to cover it. 
Speak!” 

Like a good many other men, Strickland, 
in possession of a few facts, was irresistible. 
The groom groaned. 

“I—I did not get drunk till—till—Pro¬ 
tector of the Poor, the mare rolled.” 

All horses roll at Dhunnera. The road 
is too narrow before that, and they smell 
where the other horses have rolled. This 
the bullock-drivers told me when we came 
up here,” said Adam. 

“She rolled. So her saddle was cut and 
the curb-chain lost.” 

“See!” said Adam, tugging a curb-chain 
from his pocket. “That woman in the shop 
gave it to me for a love-gift. Beshakl said 
it was not his when I showed it. But I 
knew.” 

“Then they at the grog-shop, knowing 
that I was the Servant of the Presence, said 
that unless I drank and spent money they 
would tell.” 

“A lie! A lie!” said Strickland. “Son 
of an owl, speak the truth now at least.” 




THE SON OF HIS FATHER 285 

‘‘Then I was afraid because I had lost the 
curb-chain, so I cut the saddle across and 
about.” 

“She did not roll, then.?” said Strickland, 
bewildered and angry. 

“It was only the curb-chain that was lost. 
Then I cut the saddle and went to drink 
in the shop. I drank and there was a 
fray. The rest I have forgotten till I re¬ 
covered.” 

“And the mare the while? What of the 
mare ?” 

The man looked at Strickland and col¬ 
lapsed. 

“She bore faggots for a week,” he said. 

“Oh, poor Diamond said Mrs. Strick¬ 
land. 

“And Beshakl was paid four annas for 
her hire three days ago by the woodcutter’s 
brother, who is the left-hand man of our 
rickshaw-men here,” said Adam, in a loud 
and joyful voice. “We all knew. We all 
knew. I and the servants.” 

Strickland was silent. His wife stared 
helplessly at the child; the soul out of No¬ 
where that went its own way alone. 

“Did no man help thee with the lies?” I 
asked of the groom. 


286 LAND AND SEA TALES 


“None. Protector of the Poor—not 
one. 

‘‘They grew, then.?’’ 

“As a tale grows in telling. Alas! I am 
a very bad man!” and he blinked his one 
eye dolefully. 

“Now four men are held at my Police sta¬ 
tion on thy account, and God knows how 
many more at Peshawur, besides the ques¬ 
tions at Multan, and my honour is lost, and 
my mare has been pack-pony to a wood¬ 
cutter. Son of Devils, what canst thou do 
to make amends.?” 

There was just a little break in Strick¬ 
land’s voice, and the man caught it. Bend¬ 
ing low, he answered, in the abject fawning 
whine that confounds right and wrong more 
surely than most modern creeds, “Protector 
of the Poor, is the Police service shut to— 
an honest man.?” 

“Out!” cried Strickland, and swiftly as 
the groom departed he must have heard our 
shouts of laughter behind him. 

“If you dismiss that man, Strick, I shall 
engage him. He’s a genius,” said 1 . “It 
will take you months to put this mess right, 
and Billy Watson won’t give you a minute’s 
peaca” 




THE SON OF HIS FATHER 287 

‘‘You aren’t going to tell him?” said 
Strickland appealingly. 

“ I couldn’t keep this to myself if you were 
my own brother. Four men arrested with 
you—four or forty at Peshawur—and what 
was that you said about Multan?” 

“Oh, nothing. Only some camel-men 
there have been-” 

“And a tribe of camel-men at Multan! 
All on account of a lost curb-chain. Oh, 
my Aunt!” 

“And whose memsahib [lady] was thy 
aunt?” said Adam, with the mango-stone 
in his fist. We began to laugh again. 

“But here,” said Strickland, pulling his 
face together, “is a very bad child who has 
caused his father to lose his honour before 
all the Policemen of the Punjab.” 

“Oh, they know,” said Adam. “It was 
only for the sake of show that they caught 
people. Assuredly they all knew it was 
benowti [make-up].” 

“And since when hast thou known ?” said 
the first policeman in India to his son. 

“Four days after we came here, after the 
woodcutter had asked Beshakl after the 
health of his head. Beshakl all but slew 
one of them at the bad-water place.” 




288 LAND AND SEA TALES 


‘‘If thou hadst spoken then, time and 
money and trouble to me and to others had 
all been spared. Baba, thou hast done a 
wrong greater than thy knowledge, and 
thou hast put me to shame, and set me out 
upon false words, and broken my honour. 
Thou hast done very wrong. But perhaps 
thou didst not think.?” 

“Nay, but I did think. Father, my 
honour was lost when that beating of me 
happened in Juma’s presence. Now it is 
made whole again.” 

And with the most enchanting smile in 
the world Adam climbed up on to his father’s 
lap. 


AN ENGLISH SCHOOL 



0 


AN ENGLISH SCHOOL 


O F ALL things in the world there is 
nothing, always excepting a good 
mother, so worthy of honour as a good 
school. Our School was created for the 
sons of officers in the Army and Navy, and 
filled with boys who meant to follow their 
father’s calling. 

It stood within two miles of Amyas Leigh’s 
house at Northam, overlooking the Bur¬ 
roughs and the Pebble-ridge, and the mouth 
of the Torridge whence the Rose sailed in 
search of Don Guzman. From the front 
dormitory windows, across the long rollers 
of the Atlantic, you could see Lundy Island 
and the Shutter Rock, where the Santa 
Catherina galleon cheated Amyas out of his 
vengeance by going ashore. If you have ever 
read Kingsley’s “Westward Ho!” you will 
remember how all these things happened. 

Inland lay the rich Devonshire lanes and 
the fat orchards, and to the west the gorse 
and the turf ran along the tops of the cliffs 


291 


292 LAND AND SEA TALES 

in combe after combe till you come to 
Clovelly and the Hobby and Gallantry 
Bower, and the homes of the Devonshire 
people that were old when the Armada was 
new. 

The Burroughs, lying between the school 
and the sea, was a waste of bent rush and 
grass running out into hundreds of acres of 
fascinating sand-hills called the Bunkers, 
where a few old people played golf. In the 
early days of the School there was a small 
Club-house for golfers close to the Pebble- 
ridge, but, one wild winter night, the sea got 
up and drove the Pebble-ridge clean through 
the Club basement, and the walls fell out, 
and we rejoiced, for even then golfers wore 
red coats and did not like us to use the links. 
We played as a matter of course and 
thought nothing of it. 

Now there is a new Club-house, and cars 
take the old, red, excited men to and from 
their game and all the great bunkers are 
known and written about; but we were there 
first, long before golf became a fashion or a 
disease, and we turned out one of the earliest 
champion amateur golfers of all England. 

It was a good place for a school, and that 
School considered itself the finest in the 


AN ENGLISH SCHOOL 


29? 


world, excepting perhaps Haileybury, be¬ 
cause it was modelled on Haileybury lines 
and our caps were Haileybury colours; and 
there was a legend that, in the old days when 
the School was new, half the boys had been 
Haileyburians. 

Our Head-master had been Head of the 
Modern Side at Haileybury, and, talking it 
over with boys from other public schools 
afterwards, I think that one secret of his 
great hold over us was that he was not a 
clergyman, as so many head-masters are. 
As soon as a boy begins to think in the misty 
way that boys do, he is suspicious of a man 
who punishes him one day and preaches at 
him the next. But the Head was different, 
and in our different ways we loved him. 

Through all of five years I never saw him 
lose his temper, nor among two hundred 
boys did any one at any time say or hint 
that he had his favourites. If you went to 
him with any trouble you were heard out to 
the end, and answered without being talked 
at or about or around, but always to. So 
we trusted him absolutely, and when it came 
to the choice of the various ways of entering 
the Army, what he said was so. 

He knew boys naturally better than their 


294 


LAND AND SEA TALES 


fathers knew them, and considerably better 
than they knew themselves. When the 
time came to read for the Final Army Ex¬ 
aminations, he knew the temper and powers 
of each boy, the amount of training each 
would stand and the stimulus or restraint 
that each needed, and handled them accord¬ 
ingly till they had come through the big race 
that led into the English Army. Looking 
back on it all, one can see the perfect judg¬ 
ment, knowledge of boys, patience, and 
above all, power, that the Head must have 
had. 

Some of the masters, particularly on the 
classical side, vowed that Army examina¬ 
tions were making education no more than 
mark-hunting; but there are a great many 
kinds of education, and I think the Head 
knew it, for he taught us hosts of things that 
we never found out we knew till afterwards. 
And surely it must be better to turn out 
men who do real work than men who write 
about what they think about what other 
people have done or ought to do. 

A scholar may, as the Latin masters said, 
get more pleasure out of his life than an 
Army officer, but only little children believe 
that a man’s life is given him to decorate with 


AN ENGLISH SCHOOL 295 

pretty little things, as though it were a girl’s 
room or a picture-screen. Besides, scholars 
are apt, all their lives, to judge from one 
point of view only, and by the time that an 
Army officer has knocked about the world 
for a few years he comes to look at men and 
things ‘‘by and large,” as the sailors say. 
No books in the world will teach that knack. 

So we trusted the Head at school, and 
afterwards trusted him more. 

There was a boy in the Canadian Mounted 
Police, I think, who stumbled into a fortune 
—he was the only one of us who ever did— 
and as he had never drawn more than seven 
shillings a day he very properly wrote to the 
Head from out of his North Western wilds 
and explained his situation proposing that 
the Head should take charge of and look 
after all his wealth till he could attend to 
it; and was a little impatient when the Head 
pointed out that executors and trustees and 
that sort of bird wouldn’t hand over cash 
in that casual way. The Head was worth 
trusting—he saved a boy’s life from diph¬ 
theria once at much greater risk than being 
shot at, and nobody knew anything about 
it till years afterwards. 

But I come back to the School that he 




296 LAND AND SEA TALES 

made and put his mark upon. The boys 
said that those with whom Cheltenham 
could do nothing, whom Sherbourne found 
too tough, and whom even Marlborough 
had politely asked to leave, had been sent to 
the School at the beginning of things and 
turned into men. They were, perhaps, a 
shade rough sometimes. One very curious 
detail, which I have never seen or heard of in 
any school before or since, was that the 
Army Class, which meant the Prefects, and 
was generally made up of boys from seven¬ 
teen and a half to nineteen or thereabouts, 
was allowed to smoke pipes (cigarettes were 
then reckoned the direct invention of the 
Evil One) in the country outside the College. 
One result of this was that, though these 
great men talked a good deal about the grain 
of their pipes, the beauty of their pouches, 
and the flavour of their tobacco, they did 
not smoke to any ferocious extent. The 
other, which concerned me more directly, 
was that it went much harder with a junior 
whom they caught smoking than if he had 
been caught by a master, because the action 
was flagrant invasion of their privilege, and, 
therefore, rank insolence—to be punished as 
such. Years later, the Head admitted that 



AN ENGLISH SCHOOL 


297 


he thought something of this kind would 
happen when he gave the permission. If 
any Head-master is anxious to put down 
smoking nowadays, he might do worse than 
give this scheme a trial. 

The School motto was, ‘‘Fear God, 
Honour the King’’; and so the men she 
made went out to Boerland and Zululand 
and India and Burma and Cyprus and 
Hongkong, and lived or died as gentlemen 
and officers. 

Even the most notorious bully, for whom 
an awful ending was prophesied, went to 
Canada and was mixed up in Riel’s rebel¬ 
lion, and came out of it with a fascinating 
reputation of having led a forlorn hope and 
behaved like a hero. 

All these matters were noted by the older 
boys, and when their fathers, the grey- 
whiskered colonels and generals, came down 
to see them, or the directors, who were 
K. C. B.’s and had been officers in their 
time, made a tour of inspection, it was re¬ 
ported that the School tone was “healthy.” 

Sometimes an old boy who had blossomed 
into a Subaltern of the Queen would come 
down for a last few words with the Head¬ 
master, before sailing with the regiment for 


298 LAND AND SEA TALES 

foreign parts; and the lower-school boys 
were distracted with envy, and the prefects 
of the Sixth Form pretended not to be proud 
when he walked with one of their number 
and talked about ‘‘my men, you know/’ 
till life became unendurable. 

There was an unwritten law by which an 
old boy, when he came back to pay his 
respects to the School, was entitled to a 
night in his old dormitory. The boys ex¬ 
pected it and sat up half the night listening 
to the tales of a subaltern that the boy 
brought with him—stories about riots in 
Ireland and camps at Aldershot, and all his 
first steps in the wonderful world. 

Sometimes news came in that a boy had 
died with his men fighting, and the school 
said, “ Killed in action, of course,” as though 
that were an honour reserved for it alone, and 
wondered when its own chance would come. 

It was a curiously quiet School in many 
ways. When a boy was fourteen or fifteen 
he was generally taken in hand for the 
Army Preliminary Examination, and when 
that was past he was put down to “grind” 
for the entrance into Sandhurst or Wool¬ 
wich; for it was our pride that we passed 
direct from the School to the Army, without 


AN ENGLISH SCHOOL 


299 


troubling the ‘‘crammers/’ We spoke of 
“the Shop,” which means Woolwich, as 
though we owned it. Sandhurst was our 
private reserve; and the old boys came back 
from foreign parts and told us that India 
was only Westward Ho! spread thin. 

On account of this incessant getting ready 
for examinations there was hardly time for 
us (but we made it) to gather the beautiful 
Devonshire apples, or to ferret rabbits in 
the sand-hills by the golf-links, and saloon- 
pistols were forbidden because boys got to 
fighting-parties with dust-shot, and were 
careless about guarding their eyes. 

Nor were we encouraged to lower each 
other over the cliffs with a box-rope and 
take the young hawks and jackdaws from 
their nests above the sea. Once a rope 
broke, or else the boys above grew tired of 
holding it, and a boy dropped thirty feet on 
to the boulders below. But as he fell on his 
head nothing happened, except punishment 
at the other end for all concerned. 

In summer there was almost unlimited 
bathing from the Pebble-ridge, a whale- 
backed bank four miles long of rounded 
grey boulders, where you were taught to 
ride on the rollers as they came in, to avoid 


300 LAND AND SEA TALES 

the under-tow and to watch your time for 
getting back to the beach. 

There was a big sea bath, too, in which 
all boys had to qualify for open bathing by 
swimming a quarter of a mile, at least; and 
it was a matter of honour among the school- 
houses not to let the summer end with a sin¬ 
gle boy who could not “do his quarter,’’ at 
any rate. 

Boating was impossible off that coast, but 
sometimes a fishing-boat would be wrecked 
on Braunton Bar, and we could see the life¬ 
boat and the rocket at work; and once just 
after chapel there was a cry that the herring 
were in. The School ran down to the beach 
in their Sunday clothes and fished them out 
with umbrellas. They were cooked by hand 
afterwards in all the studies and form-rooms 
till you could have smelt us at Exeter. 

But the game of the School, setting aside 
golf, which everyone could play if he had 
patience, was foot-ball. Both cricket and 
foot-ball were compulsory. That is to say, 
unless a boy could show a doctor’s certificate 
that he was physically unfit to stand up to 
the wicket or go into the scrimmage, he had 
to play a certain number of afternoons at 
the game of the season. If he had engage- 


AN ENGLISH SCHOOL 


301 


ments elsewhere—we called it ‘‘shirking”— 
he was reasonably sure of three cuts with a 
ground-ash, from the Captain of the Games 
delivered cold in the evening. A good 
player, of course, could get leave off on any 
fair excuse, but it was a beautiful rule for 
fat boys and loafers. The only unfairness 
was that a Master could load you with an 
imposition to be shown up at a certain hour, 
which, of course, prevented you from playing 
and so secured you a licking in addition to 
the imposition. But the Head always told 
us that there was not much justice in the 
world, and that we had better accustom our¬ 
selves to the lack of it early. 

Curiously enough, the one thing that the 
School did not understand was an attempt 
to drill it in companies with rifles, by way 
of making a volunteer cadet corps. We 
took our lickings for not attending that 
cheerfully, because we considered it “play¬ 
ing at soldiers,” and boys reading for the 
Army are apt to be very particular on these 
points. 

We were weak in cricket, but our foot-ball 
team (Rugby Union) at its best devastated 
the country from BlundelPs—we always 
respected Blundell’s because “Great John 




302 LAND AND SEA TALES 

Ridd” had been educated there—to Exeter, 
whose team were grown men. Yet we, who 
had been taught to play together, once drove 
them back over the November mud, back to 
their own goal-posts, till the ball was hacked 
through and touched down, and you could 
hear the long-drawn yell of ‘‘Schoo-oo/ 
Schoo-oo/.'” as far as Appledore. 

When the enemy would not come to us 
our team went to the enemy, and if victor¬ 
ious, would return late at night in a three- 
horse brake, chanting: 

It’s a way we have in the Army, 

It’s a way we have in the Navy, 

It’s a way we have in the Public Schools, 
Which nobody can deny! 

Then the boys would flock to the dormi¬ 
tory^ windows, and wave towels and join in 
the ‘‘Hip-hip-hip-hurrah!” of the chorus, 
and the winning team would swagger 
through the dormitories and show the beau¬ 
tiful blue marks on their shins, and the little 
boys would be allowed to get sponges and 
hot water. 

Very few things that the world can offer 
make up for having missed a place in the 
First Fifteen, with its black jersey and white 


AN ENGLISH SCHOOL 


303 


—snow-white—knickerbockers, and the vel¬ 
vet skull-cap with the gold tassel—the cap 
that you leave out in the rain and acci¬ 
dentally step upon to make it look as old 
as if you had been in the First Fifteen for 
years. 

The other outward sign of the First 
Fifteen that the happy boy generally wore 
through a hard season was the “jersey- 
mark"’—a raw, red scrape on ear and jaw¬ 
bone where the skin had been fretted by the 
rough jerseys in either side in the steady 
drive of many scrimmages. We were train¬ 
ed to put our heads down, pack in the 
shape of a wedge and shove, and it was in 
that shape that the First Fifteen stood up to 
a team of trained men for two and twenty 
counted minutes. We got the ball through 
in the end. 

At the close of the winter term, when there 
were no more foot-ball teams to squander 
and the Christmas holidays were coming, 
the School set itself to the regular yearly 
theatricals—a farce and a three-act play all 
complete. Sometimes it was “The Rivals,” 
or sometimes an attempt at a Shakespearean 
play; but the farces were the most popular. 

All ended with the School-Saga, the “ Vive 




304 LAND AND SEA TALES 

la Compagnier in which the Senior boy of 
the School chanted the story of the School 
for the past twelve months. It was very 
long and very difficult to make up, though 
all the poets of all the forms had been at 
work on it for weeks; and the School gave 
the chorus at the top of its voice. 

On the last Sunday of the term the last 
hymn in chapel was ‘‘Onward, Christian 
Soldiers.” We did not know what it meant 
then, and we did not care, but we stood up 
and sang it till the music was swamped in 
the rush. The big verse, like the “tug-of- 
war” verse in Mrs. Ewing’s “Story of a 
Short Life,” was: 

We are not divided, 

All one body we, 

One in faith and doctrine. 

One in charity. 

Then the organ would give a hurricane 
of joyful roars, and try to get us in hand be¬ 
fore the refrain. Later on, meeting our 
men all the world over, the meaning of that 
hymn became much too plain. 

Except for this outbreak we were not very 
pious. There was a boy who had to tell 
stories night after night in the Dormitory, 


AN ENGLISH SCHOOL 305 

and when his stock ran out he fell back on a 
book called ‘‘Eric, or Little by Little,’’ as 
comic literature, and read it till the gas was 
turned off. The boys laughed abominably, 
and there was some attempt to give selec¬ 
tions from it at the meeting of the Reading 
Society. That was quashed by authority 
because it was against discipline. 

There were no public-houses near us 
except tap-rooms that sold cider; and raw 
Devonshire cider can only be drunk after a 
long and very hot paper-chase. We hardly 
ever saw, and certainly never spoke to, 
anything in the nature of a woman from one 
year’s end to the other; for our masters were 
all unmarried. Later on, a little colony of 
mothers came down to live near the School, 
but their sons were day-boys who couldn’t 
do this and mustn’t do that, and there was 
a great deal too much dressing up on week¬ 
days and going out to tea, and things of that 
kind, which, whatever people say nowadays, 
are not helpful for boys at work. 

Our masters, luckily, were never gushing. 
They did not call us Dickie or Johnnie or 
Tommy, but Smith or Thompson; and when 
we were undoubtedly bad we were actually 
and painfully beaten with an indubitable 


3 o6 land and sea TALES 

cane on a veritable back till we wept un¬ 
feigned tears. Nobody seemed to think 
that it brutalized our finer feelings, but 
everybody was relieved when the trouble 
was over. 

Canes, especially when they are brought 
down with a drawing stroke, sting like hor¬ 
nets; but they are a sound cure for certain 
offences; and a cut or two, given with no 
malice, but as a reminder, can correct and 
keep corrected a false quantity or a wander¬ 
ing mind, more completely than any amount 
of explanation. 

There was one boy, however, to whom 
every Latin quantity was an arbitrary mys¬ 
tery, and he wound up his crimes by suggest¬ 
ing that he could do better if Latin verse 
rhymed as decent verse should. He was 
given an afternoon’s reflection to purge him¬ 
self of his contempt; and feeling certain that 
he was in for something rather warm, he 
turned Donee grains eram^^ into pure 
Devonshire dialect, rhymed, and showed it 
up as his contribution to the study of 
Horace. 

He was let off, and his master gave him 
the run of a big library, where he found as 
much verse and prose as he wanted; but 


AN ENGLISH SCHOOL 


307 


that ruined his Latin verses and made him 
write verses of his own. There he found all 
the English poets from Chaucer to Matthew 
Arnold, and a book called “Imaginary 
Conversations’’ which he did not under¬ 
stand, but it seemed to be a good thing to 
imitate. So he imitated and was handed 
up to the Head, who said that he had better 
learn Russian under his own eye, so that if 
ever he were sent to Siberia for lampooning 
the authorities he might be able to ask for 
things. 

That meant the run of another library— 
English Dramatists this time; hundreds of 
old plays; as well as thick brown books of 
voyages told in language like the ringing of 
bells. And the Head would sometimes tell 
him about the manners and customs of the 
Russians, and sometimes about his own 
early days at college, when several people who 
afterwards became great, were all young, 
and the Head was young with them, and 
they wrote wonderful things in college 
magazines. 

It was beautiful and cheap—dirt cheap, at 
the price of a permanent load of impositions, 
for neglecting mathematics and algebra. 

The School started a Natural History 


308 LAND AND SEA TALES 

Society, which took the birds and plants of 
North Devon under its charge, reporting 
first flowerings and first arrivals and new 
discoveries to learned societies in London, 
and naturally attracting to itself every boy 
in the School who had the poaching instinct. 

Some of us made membership an excuse 
for stealing apples and pheasant eggs and 
geese from farmers’ orchards and gentle¬ 
men’s estates, and we were turned out with 
disgrace. So we spoke scornfully of the 
Society ever afterwards. None the less, 
some of us had our first introduction to gun¬ 
powder in the shape of a charge of salt 
which stings like bees, fired at our legs by 
angry game-keepers. 

The institution that caused some more 
excitement was the School paper. Three 
of the boys, who had moved up the School 
side by side for four years and were allies 
in all things, started the notion as soon as 
they came to the dignity of a study of their 
own with a door that would lock. The 
other two told the third boy what to write, 
and held the staircase against invaders. 

It was a real printed paper of eight pages, 
and at first the printer was more thoroughly 
ignorant of type-setting, and the Editor was 


AN ENGLISH SCHOOL 


309 


more completely ignorant of proof-readings 
than any printer and any Editor that ever 
was. It was printed off by a gas engine; and 
even the engine despised its work, for one 
day it fell through the floor of the shop, and 
crashed—still working furiously—into the 
cellar. 

The paper came out at odd times and 
seasons, but every time it came out there 
was sure to be trouble, because the Editor 
was learning for the first time how sweet 
and good and profitable it is—and how nice 
it looks on the page—to make fun of people 
in actual print. 

For instance, there was friction among the 
study-fags once, and the Editor wrote a de¬ 
scriptive account of the Lower School,—the 
classes whence the fags were drawn,—their 
manners and customs, their ways of cook¬ 
ing half-plucked sparrows and imperfectly 
cleaned blackbirds at the gas-jets on a 
rusty nib, and their fights over sloe-jam 
made in a gallipot. It was an absolutely 
truthful article, but the Lower School knew 
nothing about truth, and would not even 
consider it as literature. 

It is less safe to write a study of an entire 
class than to discuss individuals one by 



310 LAND AND SEA TALES 

one; but apart from the fact that boys throw 
books and inkpots with a straighter eye, 
there is very little difference between the 
language of grown-up people and that of 
children. 

In those days the Editor had not learned 
this; so when the study below the Editorial 
study threw coal at the Editorial legs and 
kicked in the panels of the door, because of 
personal paragraphs in the last number, 
the Editorial Staff—and there never was so 
loyal and hard-fighting a staff—fried fat 
bacon till there was half an inch of grease 
in the pan, and let the greasy chunks down 
at the end of a string to bob against and 
defile the lower study windows. 

When that lower study—and there never 
was a public so low and unsympathetic as 
that lower study—looked out to see what 
was frosting their window-panes, the Edi¬ 
torial Staff emptied the hot fat on their 
heads, and it stayed in their hair for days 
and days, wearing shiny to the very last. 

The boy who suggested this sort of war¬ 
fare was then reading a sort of magazine, 
called Fors Clavigera, which he did not in 
the least understand,—it was not exactly a 
boy’s paper,—and when the lower study had 





AN ENGLISH SCHOOL 


311 


scraped some of the fat off their heads and 
were thundering with knobby pokers on the 
door-lock, this boy began to chant pieces of 
the Fors as a war-song, and to show that his 
mind was free from low distractions. He 
was an extraordinary person, and the only 
boy in the School who had a genuine con¬ 
tempt for his masters. There was no affec¬ 
tation in his quiet insolence. He honestly 
did despise them; and threats that made us 
all wince only caused him to put his head a 
little on one side and watch the master as a 
sort of natural curiosity. 

The worst of this was that his allies had 
to take their share of his punishments, for 
they lived as communists and socialists hope 
to live one day, when everybody is good. 
They were bad, as bad as they dared to be, 
but their possessions were in common, ab¬ 
solutely. And when ‘The Study” was 
out of funds they took the most respectable 
clothes in possession of the Syndicate, and 
leaving the owner one Sunday and one 
week-day suit, sold the rest in Bideford 
town. Later, when there was another 
crisis, it was not the respectable one’s watch 
that was taken by force for the good of the 
Study and pawned, and never redeemed. 


312 LAND AND SEA TALES 

Later still, money came into the Syndi¬ 
cate honestly, for a London paper that did 
not know with whom it was dealing, pub¬ 
lished and paid a whole guinea for some 
verses that one of the boys had written and 
sent up under a nom-de-plume, and the 
Study caroused on chocolate and condensed 
milk and pilchards and Devonshire cream, 
and voted poetry a much sounder business 
than it looks. 

So things went on very happily till the 
three were seriously warned that they must 
work in earnest, and stop giving amateur 
performances of ‘‘Aladdin” and writing 
librettos of comic operas which never came 
off, and worrying their house-masters into 
grey hairs. 

Then they all grew very good, and one 
of them got into the Army; and another— 
the Irish one—became an engineer, and the 
third one found himself on a daily paper 
half a world away from the Pebble-ridge and 
the sea-beach. The three swore eternal 
friendship before they parted, and from time 
to time they met boys of their year in India, 
and magnified the honour of the old School. 

The boys are scattered all over the world, 
one to each degree of land east and west, as 



AN ENGLISH SCHOOL 


313 


their fathers were before them, doing much 
the same kind of work; and it is curious to 
notice how little the character of the man 
differs from that of the boy of sixteen or 
seventeen. 

The general and commander-in-chief of 
the Study, he who suggested selling the 
clothes, never lost his head even when he 
andhis friends were hemmed round by the en¬ 
emy—the Drill Sergeant—far out of bounds 
and learning to smoke under a hedge. He 
was sick and dizzy, but he rose to the occas¬ 
ion, took command of his forces, and by 
strategic manoeuvres along dry ditches and 
crawlings through tall grass, outflanked the 
enemy and got into safe ground without 
losing one man of the three. 

A little later, when he was a subaltern in 
India, he was bitten by a mad dog, went to 
France to be treated by Pasteur, and came 
out again in the heat of the hot weather to 
find himself almost alone in charge of six 
hundred soldiers, and his Drill Sergeant dead 
and his office clerk run away, leaving the 
Regimental books in the most ghastly con¬ 
fusion. Then we happened to meet; and 
as he was telling his story there was just 
the same happy look on his face as when he 


314 LAND AND SEA TALES 

steered us down the lanes with the certainty 
of a superior thrashing if we were caught. 

And there were others who went abroad 
with their men, and when they got into 
tight places behaved very much as they had 
behaved at foot-ball. 

The boy who used to take flying jumps 
on to the ball and roll over and over with it, 
because he was big and fat and could not 
run, took a flying jump onto a Burmese 
dacoit whom he had surprised by night in a 
stockade; but he forgot that he was much 
heavier than he had been at School, and by 
the time he rolled off his victim the little 
dacoit was stone dead. 

And there was a boy who was always be¬ 
ing led astray by bad advice, and begging 
off punishment on that account. He got 
into some little scrape when he grew up, and 
we who knew him knew, before he was rep¬ 
rimanded by his commanding officer, ex¬ 
actly what his excuse would be. It came 
out almost word for word as he was used to 
whimper it at School. He was cured, 
though by being sent off on a small expedi¬ 
tion where he alone would be responsible 
for any advice that was going, as well as 
for fifty soldiers. 


AN ENGLISH SCHOOL 315 

And the best boy of all—he was really 
good, not book good—was shot in the thigh 
as he was leading his men up the ramp of a 
fortress. All he said was, ‘‘Put me up against 
that tree and take my men on”; and when 
the men came back he was dead. 

Ages and ages ago, when Queen Victoria 
was shot at by a man in the street, the 
School paper made some verses about it that 
ended like this: 

One school of many, made to make 
Men who shall hold it dearest right 

To battle for their ruler’s sake, 

And stake their being in the fight. 


Sends greeting, humble and sincere. 

Though verse be rude and poor and mean. 
To you, the greatest as most dear, 

Victoria, by God’s Grace, our Queen! 

Such greetings as should come from those 
Whose fathers faced the Sepoy hordes. 

Or served you in the Russian snows 
And dying, left their sons their swords. 


For we are bred to do your will 
By land and sea, wherever flies 
The Flag to fight and follow still. 
And work your empire’s destinies. 



3i6 land and sea TALES 

Once more we greet you, though unseen 
Our greetings be, and coming slow. 

Trust us, if need arise, O Queen! 

We shall not tarry with the blow. 

And there are one or two places in the 
world that can bear witness how the School 
kept its word. 


A COUNTING-OUT SONG 





f\ 


A 


A COUNTING-OUT SONG 


W HAT is the song the children sing 

When doorway lilacs bloom in Spring, 
And the Schools are loosed, and the games 
are played 

That were deadly earnest when Earth was 
made ? 

Hear them chattering, shrill and hard. 

After dinner-time, out in the yard. 

As the sides are chosen and all submit 
To the chance of the lot that shall make 
them ‘‘It.” 

(Singing) Eenee^ MeeneCy MaineCy Mo! 
Catch a nigger hy the toe ! 

If he hollers let him go 
Eeneey Meeneey Maineey Mo ! 
You — are—It ! ’ ’ 

Eenee, Meenee, Mainee, and Mo 
Were the First Big Four of the Long Ago, 
When the Pole of the Earth sloped thirty 
degrees. 

And Central Europe began to freeze, 

319 


320 LAND AND SEA TALES 

And they needed Ambassadors staunch and 
stark 

To steady the Tribes in the gathering dark: 
But the frost was fierce and flesh was frail, 
So they launched a Magic that could not 
fail. 

(Singing) Eenee^ Meenee^ Mainee, Mo ! 

Hear the wolves across the snow t 
Someone has to kill Vm —so 
Eenee, Meenee, Mainee^ Mo 
Make — you—It H 


Slowly the Glacial Epoch passed, 

Central Europe thawed out at last; 

And, under the slush of the melting snows^ 
The first dim shapes of the Nations rose. 
Rome, Britannia, Belgium, Gaul— 

Flood and avalanche fathered them all; 

And the First Big Four, as they watched the 
mess, 

Pitied Man in his helplessness. 

(Singing) ^^Eenee^ Meenee^ Mainee, Mo! 

Trouble starts when Nations 
grow. 

Someone has to stop it—so 
Eeneey Meenee^ Mainee^ Mo 
Make — you—It 


A COUNTING-OUT SONG 321 

Thus it happened, but none can tell 
What was the Power behind the spell— 
Fear, or Duty, or Pride, or Faith— 

That sent men shuddering out to death— 
To cold and watching, and, worse than 
these. 

Work, more work, when they looked for 
ease— 

To the day’s discomfort, the night’s de¬ 
spair. 

In the hope of a prize that they never would 
share. 

(Singing) “ EeneCy Meenee^ Mainee^ Mo ! 

Man is born to toil and zvoe. 
One will cure the other—so 
Eenee, Meeneey Mainee^ Mo 
Make — you — It^ 


Once and again, as the Ice went North 
The grass crept up to the Firth of 
Forth. 

Once and again, as the Ice came South 
The glaciers ground over Lossiemouth. 

But, grass or glacier, cold or hot, 

Men went out who would rather not, 



322 LAND AND SEA TALES 

And fought with the Tiger, the Pig and the 
Ape, 

To hammer the world into decent shape. 
(Singing) Eenee^ Meenee, Mainee^ Mo ! 

Whaf s the use of doing so ? 
Ask the Gods, for we donf 
know; 

But Eenee, Meenee, Mainee, 
Mo 

Make — us—It !” 

'Nothing is left of that terrible rune 
But a tag of gibberish tacked to a tune 
That ends the waiting and settles the claims 
Of children arguing over their games; 

For never yet has a boy been found 
To shirk his turn when the turn came round; 
Or even a girl has been known to say 
,“If you laugh at me I sha’n’t play.” 

For— Eenee, Meenee, Mainee, Mo, 

Dont you let the grown-ups know! 
You may hate it ever so. 

But if you re chose youLfc 
bound to go. 

When Eenee, Meenee, Mainee, 
Mo 

Make — you—It W 


THE END 


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